Senate Farm Bill Overview: Key Areas of Interest

 

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On June 23, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-AR) released a discussion draft* of the Agriculture Act of 2026, following the passage of the House farm bill (the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026) in April. Chairman Boozman has said a markup of the bill will occur before the Senate breaks for its August recess, but it has yet to be scheduled in the midst of the ongoing budget debate and the continued absence of Senator Mitch McConnell, a key vote on the Senate Agriculture Committee. 

Context: 

In 2025, Congress used the budget reconciliation process to fund the biggest budget-scored pieces of food and farm policy, including increased funding for commodity support (Title I) and crop insurance (Title XI), major cuts to nutrition funding (Title IV), and shifts in the conservation  (Title II) baseline funding (achieved by rolling over unspent dollars of the Inflation Reduction Act’s conservation funding into the permanent baseline), a departure from the traditional Farm Bill process in which a single omnibus bill typically sets funding across all titles. The split left both the House farm bill (H.R. 7567) and this Senate Farm Bill as smaller "skinny farm bills". 

As a result, the Senate’s Agriculture Act of 2026 does not reset funding for the titles reconciliation already addressed, beyond making additional cuts to conservation programming. Instead, it acts as the primary vehicle for program authorizations and adjustments, and setting FY2027-2031 funding and authorizations in titles largely untouched by reconciliation, such as Research (Title VII), Forestry (Title VIII), Energy (Title IX), Horticulture (Title X), and Credit (Title V).

The Republicans’ narrow majority in the Senate means the Farm Bill needs bipartisan support to pass with 60 votes on the Senate floor; as a result, the draft deliberately side-steps several controversial “poison pill” provisions that held up the House version of the bill, including pesticide labeling, year-round E15, and the SAVE Our Bacon Act (H.R. 4673). The draft leaves major SNAP cuts from the 2025 reconciliation bill untouched, and Senate Democrats have reiterated that addressing SNAP and the delay for state cost-share requirements is a requirement for their Farm Bill support.

The draft also does not address concerns over how USDA’s staffing shortage will impact the Department's capacity to implement Farm Bill programs and provide timely service to producers. USDA’s staff has been reduced by 20,000 people over 2025, and of particular concern for soil health, NRCS has lost 23% of its staff, with the staff position of Soil Conservationist as the greatest single position lost, with over 700 staff removed. 

Check out the discussion draft full text, a section-by-section 66-page summary, a 9-page title summary, and an even shorter high-level one-pager. The Committee has also released an overview of marker bills included in the draft, over 50 of which are tracked in our Soil Health Bill Tracker. As a reminder, you can use the bill tracker's filters at any time to narrow the view to specific categories such as marker bills, bills included in the farm bill, bills with bipartisan support, and more.

Here are key provisions of note in the Senate Farm Bill discussion draft that would impact soil health, summarized by title: 

Title I (Commodities) establishes a new Specialty Crop Assistance Framework for producers in the event of market disruption or economic crisis (Section 1304).

Within the Conservation Title (Title II):

  • Conservation Reserve Program (Subtitle A) reauthorizes the CRP through 2031 (Sec. 2101), maintaining the total enrollment acre cap at 27 million acres, including up to 12 million acres for Grasslands CRP, and increasing the CRP rental payment limitation from $50,000 to $125,000 (Sec. 2105).

    • It does not renew the Transition Incentive Program, which assisted with the transition of expiring CRP land to beginning, veteran, and underserved farmers.

  • Environmental Quality Incentives Program (Subtitle B) cuts over $1.9 billion over the first five years of the EQIP budget window, while maintaining the original funding baseline for 2031 and beyond. It also extends the 50 percent funding reservation for livestock and grazing practices, extends the organic set-aside, and streamlines program requirements. 

    • Defines “precision agriculture” as “managing, tracking, or reducing crop or livestock production inputs…at a heightened level of spatial and temporal granularity and biological targeting to improve efficiencies, reduce waste, and maintain environmental quality,” and "precision agriculture technology" as the tools to achieve this.

  • Conservation Stewardship Program (Subtitle C) removes $50 million a year in funding from the CSP baseline. 

  • Funding and Administration (Subtitle D) requires USDA to adopt new and modify existing conservation practice standards, and to publicize what qualifies as a practice and the data needed to justify new standards (Secs. 2402-2403).

    • Defines "approved non-federal certifying entity" and sets up a certification process and timelines for third-party technical service providers (Sec. 2404).

  • Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (Subtitle E) increases ACEP cost-share rates from 50 to 60 percent generally, and from 75 to 80 percent for grasslands of special significance (Sec. 2502).

  • Regional Conservation Partnership Program (Subtitle F) clarifies RCPP's purpose to include addressing flooding and drought and improving flood resiliency (Sec. 2601).

    • Adds wildlife habitat connectivity and wildlife migration corridors as a priority resource concern in Critical Conservation Areas (Sec. 2606).

  • Emergency Conservation Programs (Sec. 2802)

    • Extends assistance to agricultural producers who hold permits or leases for grazing on federal or state land.

  • Conservation of Private Grazing Land (Sec. 2804) reauthorizes the Conservation of Private Grazing Land program (Sec. 2804).

  • State Conservation Assistance Program (Sec. 2805 ) creates a new State Conservation Assistance Program with $50 million in annual funding for program grants to improve soil health, wildlife habitat, or other local resource concerns (Sec. 2805). 

Title IV (Nutrition) includes the Strengthening Local Food Security Program (Sec. 4306), a state-led local food purchasing program authorizing $200 million in discretionary funding through 2031, and ensures a greater share of food purchases (51%) are made from small and mid-sized farms, and beginning and veteran farmers.

Title VII (Research) expands the goals of USDA’s pilot program, Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority (AGARDA), to explicitly include soil and water conservation (Sec. 7125) and increases authorization of appropriations from $10 million to $15 million for agriculture and food policy research centers (Sec. 7106). It also reauthorizes appropriations for University Research/State Agricultural Experiment Stations (Sec. 7120), Rangeland Research Programs (Sec. 7127), Integrated Management Systems research (Sec. 7202), the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (Sec. 7209), and the Sustainable Agriculture Technology Development and Transfer program, which directs the creation of practical handbooks, technical guides, and train-the-trainer education programs to help farmers adopt environmentally sound and economically viable practices (Sec. 7203). It also increases funding for Centers of Excellence at 1890 Institutions, USDA’s research hubs at historically Black land-grant universities, from $10 million to $20 million while adding climate resilience and value-added agriculture as focus areas (Sec. 7212). Additionally, it protects the Grazinglands Research Laboratory (Sec. 7411) and creates new high-priority research and extension priorities for PFAS, biochar, and wheat resiliency (Sec. 7208). 

Title VIII (Forestry) expands the Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership Program to include enhancements to soil and water resources (Sec. 8240). 

Title X (Horticulture) Sec. 10201 exempts plant biostimulants from FIFRA regulation, and requires a Soil Health Study (Sec. 10202) on their use. Sec. 10112 directs USDA to study and potentially modernize National Organic Program oversight and inspection requirements.

Title XI (Crop Insurance) adds specialty crop representation to the FCIC Board and creates a Specialty Crops Coordinator (Sec. 11001). Sec. 11006 extends beginning-farmer premium assistance to veteran farmers/ranchers (10 years or less operating). Sec. 11004 adds market price declines not caused by the producer as a qualifying cause of loss for crop insurance. It also directs FCIC research into organic-producer insurance barriers, wine grape wildfire smoke exposure, and frost/freeze policies for specialty crops (Sec. 11014). 

Additional provisions in Title XII (Miscellaneous) direct USDA to support voluntary interconnectivity standards for precision agriculture technology adoption (Sec. 12510) and require USDA to publish a report on the U.S. fertilizer industry (Sec. 12302).

For further analysis on the discussion draft, please explore the following selection of resources:

Farm Bill Timing & Next Steps

Senator Boozman has said he hopes to hold a markup of the bill before the Senate leaves for its August recess, which would keep the bill on track for a Senate floor vote and conference with the House this fall. If the markup slips until after the recess, Congress would be facing an extremely tight turnaround before the current farm bill’s one-year extension expires September 30, raising the odds of needing a fourth extension. The farm bill timeline is also contingent on Congress’s ability to address the budget reconciliation and associated appropriations markups, and the legislative calendar in the run-up to the mid-term elections typically avoids contested, partisan fights. Though the 2018 farm bill was passed in December by a lame duck Congress, House Agriculture Committee Chairman GT Thompson has warned that if the bill is not passed by early January, the legislative process will have to restart with a new Congress. 

*The discussion draft includes a full text of the bill to facilitate policy conversations; however, it has not been formally introduced in the Senate and thus is not yet tracked on Congress.gov or Land Core’s Bill Tracker. The Senate Farm Bill is expected to be officially introduced ahead of its eventual markup in the Senate Agriculture Committee. 

Please share this resource with policymakers, producers, financial stakeholders, soil health advocates, and partners in your network. 

For further information, please contact Land Core’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Aria McLauchlan.

Land Core is a 501(c)3 organization with a mission to advance soil health policies and programs that create value for farmers, businesses and communities. The organization is building the missing infrastructure and market-based incentives that will make the rapid adoption and scalability of soil health possible.

 
Policy MemosLand Core Staff2026