By Jessica Domel
Multimedia Reporter

Republicans on the U.S. House Ag Committee are preparing to move forward on the farm bill.

Friday, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT’ Thompson (R-PA) released the text of the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026.

“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. “The farm bill affects our entire country, regardless of whether you live on a farm, and I look forward to seeing my colleagues in Congress work together to get this critical legislation across the finish line.”

Following the release of the text, Texas Farm Bureau President Russell Boening said the food and farm legislation will provide much-needed certainty to farm and ranch families.

“Texas farmers and ranchers have been calling on Congress to finish its work on the farm bill for too long now,” said Boening, who is a farmer, rancher and dairyman in South Texas.

Prior to its release, the chairman told reporters the legislation is very similar to the 2024 farm bill framework but with a few updates.

“The remaining programs—those not included in the Working Families Tax Cuts—span across all 12 titles of the farm bill,” Thompson said. “They expand investments in rural communities, bring science-backed management back to our national forests and restore regulatory certainty in the interstate marketplace.”

The programs improve risk management tools for specialty crop producers, lower energy costs in rural America, and prioritize American commodities on the global stage,” Thompson wrote in the op-ed, which appeared in Agri-Pulse.

“A new farm bill will expand producers’ access to credit, promote precision agriculture and enhance conservation programs for working land,” Thompson said.

Although many of the farm bill’s programs were addressed in HR 1, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Thompson said U.S. farmers and ranchers cannot keep waiting for the certainty of a farm bill.

“The simple fact is that 2018 policies are no match for 2026 challenges,” Thompson said. “To be clear, they were no match for 2025, 2024 or 2023 challenges either. Political gridlock has stood in the way of this bill for far too long.”

He said the challenges and opportunities agriculture faces now require new policy.

“We made historic agricultural investments last summer in the Working Families Tax cuts (HR 1), but there are many key policy components that remain to be addressed,” Thompson said. “With that in mind, the House Committee on Agriculture will begin marking up a new farm bill Feb. 23.”

Following the release of the bill Friday, House Ag Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-MN) expressed her frustration with the draft legislation.

Earlier in the week, Craig said it would be “very difficult, if not impossible” for her to back Thompson’s farm bill proposal.

The full text of the bill can be found here.
An overview provided by House Ag Republicans can be found here, along with a title-by-title summary here.

Boening called on the members of the House Ag Committee to vote yes to move the bill out of committee when it is marked up later this month and asked congressional leaders to support the legislation when it’s brought to the House floor.

“It’s time for Congress to prioritize the men and women who produce the food and fiber of our country by completing the farm bill,” Boening said.