House Agriculture Chair Glenn Thompson on Friday proposed a five-year farm bill to tweak conservation programs, boost logging and wildfire prevention on national forests, and limit states’ ability to put their own health warnings on pesticides.
The Pennsylvania Republican included many Democratic-backed provisions on conservation and agricultural research in an effort to draw bipartisan support. But pesticide language and other elements of the bill could prove tough to swallow for most Democrats on the committee.
“This bill provides modern policies for modern challenges and is shaped by years of listening to the needs of farmers, ranchers, and rural Americans,” Thompson said, adding that the measure would give farmers certainty they’ve been seeking since the 2018 farm bill expired in 2023. It has been extended more than once since.
The new proposed farm bill outlines programs across the Department of Agriculture. While Congress usually passes a comprehensive, updated measure every five years, the Republican majority this time divided the bill — enacting some pieces through budget reconciliation in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act last year and leaving others for the Agriculture committees to sort out.
Provisions in the new draft — up for a markup the week of Feb. 23 — address programs with discretionary spending that’s determined each year by appropriators, which rules didn’t allow to be included in the reconciliation bill.
Pesticide provisions could prove especially sensitive, as Republicans seek to rein in states’ efforts to put cancer or other health warnings on product labels even though EPA doesn’t identify such a danger. That runs into conflict with some activists in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement who are urging less pesticide use.
House Agriculture ranking member Angie Craig of Minnesota said in a statement that Democrats are still reviewing the details but that so far the measure looks like a “political charade.”
“Farmers need Congress to act swiftly to end inflationary tariffs, stabilize trade relationships, expand domestic market opportunities like year-round E15 and help lower input costs,” Craig said, referring to the 15 percent ethanol fuel that farm groups want to see available year-round.
Craig added: “The Republican majority instead chose to ignore Democratic priorities and focus on pushing a shell of a farm bill with poison pills that complicates if not derails chances of getting anything done.”
Thompson is also looking to shield pesticide manufacturers from related lawsuits, as long as they’ve followed EPA regulations. That’s a response to the flood of litigation around the weed killer glyphosate around cancer claims even though EPA has said there’s no direct link.
While the proposal acknowledges states’ authority to set certain rules around pesticide use, it reaffirms the federal government’s supremacy in registering and regulating pesticides consistently across the country, especially in labeling.
Conservation
Other parts of the bill have a more bipartisan flavor through bills borrowed from Democrats.
The legislation would expand precision agriculture, or the methods that rely on satellite imagery and global positioning to pinpoint where fertilizing, irrigation and other farm practices should be focused.
It would create a new matching grant program for state and tribes to improve soil health, create block grants for future disaster assistance and direct the Agriculture Department to study the impact of land-based solar arrays on farmland — a phenomenon Thompson and other Republicans on the committee warn is robbing the country of productive cropland.
The package would reauthorize the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers in long-term contracts to take marginal farmland out of production and plant grass or other covers.
The program, popular with Upper Midwest lawmakers, would remain capped at 27 million acres nationally and see little change from the 2018 version.
Thompson’s bill largely reflects a five-year proposal the Agriculture Committee passed in 2024 but that never received a vote in the full House.
All but four Democrats on the committee at that time voted against it, mainly due to disagreements around low-income nutrition assistance.
The Senate Agriculture, Forestry and Nutrition Committee has yet to introduce an updated farm bill plan of its own.
Research and climate
Research programs, left out of the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, would see a modest boost in Thompson’s proposal.
The bill says little about climate change, despite the growing impact on farming throughout the country. But climate action is implied through the research title, which would put new emphasis on soil health, the effects of drought and flooding, and on biochar — the partly burned forest byproduct that enriches the soil and sequesters carbon.
The proposal endorses the creation of a national biochar research network to “understand how to use biochar productively to contribute to climate mitigation,” among other benefits.
Thompson proposed reauthorization of the Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is tasked with funding agriculture studies deemed too risky without public funding. However, appropriators have yet to provide close to the fully authorized amount of $50 million annually.
The bill would promote research on the effects of exposure to wildfire smoke — a concern for vineyards in California — and on the long term health of white oak trees, important for the manufacture of whiskey barrels and other items.
Forests and wildfires
On forestry policy, the bill borrows pieces of the “Fix Our Forests Act,” a forest management measure that’s passed the House but been slow to move in the Senate.
Thompson’s draft would ease requirements for environmental reviews for clearing vegetation around electric utility lines in national forests and for certain restoration projects, expanding categorical exclusions from the National Environmental Policy Act to 10,000 acres.
But Friday’s version doesn’t include the “Save Our Sequoias Act,” a bipartisan measure to allow more intensive management of sequoia groves that was included in the committee-approved bill in 2024.
On energy, the bill would reaffirm Congress’ support of the Rural Energy for America Program, doubling the maximum loan guarantee provided by the USDA to $50 million.
The program helps farmers and small businesses install energy efficiency projects or alternative energy such as small solar arrays and wind turbines, although it’s facing extra scrutiny from the Trump administration.
In addition, the USDA would be required to consider the potential improvement to a REAP applicant’s financial condition in weighing applications.
Among the bill’s omissions: limits on the Agriculture secretary’s use of the Commodity Credit Corporation, the decades-old agency that buys farm commodities and takes other marketing-related actions to support the farm economy.
In 2024, Thompson included a provision to limit the secretary’s discretion over the CCC, after then-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tapped it to pay for climate-smart farming and marketing grants.
President Donald Trump in his first term used CCC funds to compensate farmers for losses tied to his trade battles with other countries, prompting objections from Democrats.
