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Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a four-part blog series analyzing the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, which was reported out of the House Agriculture Committee on March 5. This post provides an overview of the markup process and the bill as a whole, as well as its likely (or unlikely) path to becoming law. Subsequent posts provide a deep dive analysis of the bill’s potential impacts on the farm safety net, local and regional food systems, and conservation, climate resilience, and sustainable and organic research. 

In the early morning hours of Thursday, March 5, 2026, the House Committee on Agriculture favorably reported the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (FFNSA, H.R. 7567) out of committee by a vote of 34-17. FFNSA arrives at an undeniable crossroads for American food and agriculture. 

Across fields and communities nationwide, recent years have brought hardships not seen since perhaps the US farm crisis of the 1980s. Today, high production costs, unstable markets, and low crop prices driven by uncertain export markets and overproduction have converged to create an economic climate that threatens farmers’ livelihoods. Unfortunately, too many of these impacts stem directly and indirectly from actions taken by the current Administration. 

Meanwhile, in the halls of Congress, elected Representatives have been unable to pass a new, bipartisan farm bill. Since at least the mid-1960’s, Congress has reauthorized a new farm bill roughly every five years by bringing together a bipartisan coalition of rural and urban interests and the Members of Congress who represented them. Yet, the most recent full farm bill – the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill, PL 115-334) – was signed into law in December 2018. As of March 2026, we are in uncharted waters – over seven years have passed since the 2018 Farm Bill was signed into law, the longest such stretch in recent memory.

Opportunities to authorize a new, full farm bill during the 118th Congress – in 2023 and 2024 – came and went in both the House and Senate. When the November 2024 election delivered a governing “trifecta” for the Republican Party, they turned to the budget reconciliation process to pass a bill that updated some parts of the farm bill, while leaving most out. This reconciliation bill, commonly referred to as H.R. 1,  took the unprecedented step of cutting nearly $200 billion from one part of the farm bill in order to fund another part of the farm bill, effectively breaking the decades-old bipartisan farm bill coalition.

It is against this backdrop – unprecedented times in farm country and in federal food and agriculture policy – that the House Agriculture Committee introduced FFNSA. 

A single farm bill – as important as it is – cannot solve everything. Yet a single farm bill can set us on a better path. Judged within the inseparable context of this moment, FFNSA includes some promising provisions but ultimately falls short, choosing to double down on an agricultural system that simply is not working, rather than making real strides toward a system that does.

The FFNSA markup kicked off shortly after 6:00 pm EDT on March 3 and did not conclude until around 1:30 am EDT on March 5 – more than twenty hours in total. The vast majority of the markup focused on the debate of dozens of amendments offered by policymakers from both parties.

To understand the debate around many of the amendments, it’s important to understand that, due to the unique nature of current Congressional budgeting rules, any reauthorized farm bill cannot cost more than the most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline of the current (in this case, 2018) Farm Bill. This means that to increase funding for one farm bill program, a corresponding amount of funding has to be cut from another farm bill program. Traditionally, this has meant redirecting funding from a program within the same Title (eg, Conservation Title) of the bill. Without such an “offset” for new or increased funding, however, many amendments offered during markup, which would have improved the bill, were rejected because they were not budget-neutral. During markup, several lawmakers from both parties took to deriding CBO – Congress’s nonpartisan official budgetary scorekeeper – when their amendments did not achieve budget-neutrality.

In reality, however, partial blame rests with Congressional leaders who have not been able to  identify and direct outside funding resources into the farm bill, even while Congress has simultaneously managed to move tens of billions in funding for ad hoc assistance programs since 2018. This inability to secure new, outside funding for a farm bill is, in part, why H.R. 1 resorted to slashing billions from nutrition assistance to fuel farm subsidies, and why the new version of FFNSA lacks the resources to set us on a better path. 

In total, just over 150 amendments were filed to FFNSA. 74 amendments received a vote of some sort – 29 of which were roll call votes and 45 of which were voice votes. Of those 74 amendments that received a vote, 44 were approved and incorporated into FFNSA – 3 by roll call vote, and 41 by voice vote. Find the full list of amendments here. Below is a list of amendment votes directly related to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)’s priorities that were taken during the House Committee on Agriculture’s markup of FFNSA:

• Representative Dusty Johnson’s (R-SD-AL) amendment to expand eligibility for the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) to include larger co-ops, risking crowding out opportunities for individual farmers and rural small businesses. NSAC opposed. Approved by voice vote.
• Rep. Brad Finstad’s (R-MN-1) amendment to make significant changes to the Farming Opportunities Training Outreach program – including 2501 and the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program –  that alters priority areas and how applications are reviewed, ultimately undermining the effectiveness of both programs. NSAC opposed. Approved by voice vote.
• Rep. David Scott’s (D-GA-13) amendment to provide mandatory funding for the Scholarships for Students at 1890s Institutions. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor.
• Rep. Jahana Hayes’s (D-CT-5) amendment to improve the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP) Program and Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) by establishing a simplified, revenue-based option within NAP, creating an “on-ramp” for producers to transition from NAP to WFRP, adding incentives for insurance agents selling WFRP policies, and authorizing the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to pilot new projects within NAP to develop innovative crop insurance options for RMA, among other changes. NSAC supported.  Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor.
• Rep. Chellie Pingree’s (D-ME-1) amendment to remove harmful pesticide preemption language in FFNSA, thereby restoring the ability of communities to protect themselves from chemical exposure. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote, 28 opposed – 22 in favor.
• Rep. Nikki Budzinski’s (D-IL-13) amendment to restore full funding to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) – a popular and oversubscribed conservation program – after hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned off to other programs. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor.
• Rep. Sharice Davids’ (D-KS-3) amendment to ensure that farmers have access to local USDA offices by preventing their closure, and requiring USDA to rehire qualified employees who have been terminated since January 2025. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor.
• Rep. Shomari Figures’ (D-AL-2) amendment to strengthen land-grant universities’ ability to provide heirs’ property education and succession planning. NSAC supported. Approved by voice vote.
• Rep. Alma Adams’ (D-NC-12) amendment to increase funding for 1890’s Centers of Excellence. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor.
• Rep. Alma Adams’ (D-NC-12) amendment to ensure a reliable and accurate assessment of the prevalence of food insecurity among families, seniors, and children across the country by requiring USDA to continue its implementation of the Annual Household Food Security Survey. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor.
• Rep. Eugene Vindman’s (D-VA-7) amendment to authorize the Organic Transitions Program (ORG), which supports highly innovative research, education, and extension projects that help producers overcome barriers in undertaking the transition to become successful USDA certified organic farms. NSAC supported. Approved by voice vote.
• Rep. Eric Sorensen’s (D-IL-17) amendment to direct USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to develop a standardized Soil Carbon Monitoring methodology and develop a Soil Carbon Monitoring Network. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor.
• Rep. Shri Thanedar’s (D-MI-13) amendment to restore the unexpected, unjustified cuts to nutrition education programs that connect low-income communities to nutritious foods by funding SNAP-Ed at $500 million annually in mandatory funding. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor. 
• Rep. Gabe Vasquez’s (D-NM-6) amendment to support wildlife habitat connectivity and migration corridors, increase payment limits for private land owners, and provide technical support for voluntary practices that improve landscape resilience. NSAC supported. Approved by voice vote.
• Rep. Jill Tokuda’s (D-HI-2) amendment to return rescinded funding that would bring farm-fresh food to students’ plates in schools and childcare centers by funding a local food purchasing program with $660,100,000 annually. NSAC supported. Failed by roll call vote along party lines, all Republicans (27) opposed – all Democrats (24) in favor.
• Vote on the final House Committee on Agriculture passage of the FFNSA. NSAC opposed. Approved by roll call vote 34 in favor – 17 in opposition.

In addition to the amendments listed above, numerous amendments that would have improved the bill were offered but did not receive a vote, including amendments that would have: removed the WFRP expansion limit (Salinas); created a New Producer Economic Security Program to support beginning farmers and ranchers (Budzinski); relocated the state assistance for soil health (SASH) program to the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (Tokuda); provided $50 million in mandatory annual funding for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (Thanedar); and increased funding for the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Incentive Program (Rouzer).

Ultimately, the Committee markup resulted in some changes to FFNSA, but none meaningful enough to make it worthy of support. The remainder of this blog series reveals the extent to which key NSAC farm bill priorities are impacted by FFNSA’s proposals, or lack thereof.

As of posting, there are no concrete and immediately available details about the next steps for FFNSA. While movement on the House floor and in the Senate appears possible, it remains far from guaranteed. For any farm bill to find a legitimate path to becoming law this year, at least two factors will need to be present. First, any farm bill will have to make robust, new investments. The scattered policy improvements included in FFNSA ring hollow without the resources to fuel them. Second, the threshold to pass a farm bill in the Senate requires 60 votes, and thus, the path to a farm bill remains through a true bipartisan process.

More than 7 years removed from the 2018 Farm Bill, farmers, families, and communities still deserve – now more than ever – a new full, bipartisan farm bill that rises to the occasion. As always, NSAC will continue to steadfastly engage with lawmakers as the farm bill meanders its way through the 119th Congress.

The post Unpacking the House Farm Bill: Part 1 appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.