Other Ag News: Unpacking the House Farm Bill: Part 3

Editor’s Note: This is the third 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. The first post provides an overview of the markup process and the bill as a whole. The second post provides a deep dive analysis of the bill’s potential impacts on local and regional food systems. This post offers an analysis of its impacts on the farm safety net, farms’ ability to access land and capital, and fair competition. The final post will cover conservation, climate resilience, and sustainable and organic research. 

The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (FFNSA) fails to provide a robust farm safety net for all farmers. 

Many farmers find themselves at an inflection point similar to the farm crisis of the late 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 in which farmers’ livelihoods are threatened.

While there are several proposals in FFNSA that the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) believes take steps in the right direction, misguided provisions and the absence of meaningful reforms – coupled with the commodity and crop insurance provisions from 2025’s H.R. 1 – only perpetuate the status quo of inequitable resource distribution in US farming. At a moment when we need to re-envision the farm safety net, FFNSA falls significantly short.

The following analysis is divided into sections addressing changes to disaster assistance, access to land and farm credit, crop insurance, and fair competition.

• Disaster Assistance 
• Access to Land and Farm Credit
• Crop Insurance
• Fair Competition

FFNSA includes a few notable changes to the structure of future disaster and economic relief programs. 

In the context of a stable and reliable farm safety net, disaster relief programs should be primarily used to respond to extreme weather or emergency circumstances, and to cover impacts beyond standard crop production losses. However, FFNSA takes a different approach.  Rather than taking necessary steps to strengthen and increase access to existing and permanent safety net programs, the bill moves the future of the farm safety net further in the direction of increased disaster and economic assistance programs delivered through ad hoc spending. 

Ad hoc spending creates a complicated web of programs, applications, timelines, and eligibility criteria that farmers and ranchers need to sift through to receive the support they need. This aid often leaves out a significant number of producers altogether and concentrates funds amongst a smaller number of large operations. Consequently, while NSAC generally agrees that creating consistent criteria for disaster and economic assistance programs would be beneficial, FFNSA would establish criteria that fall short for many farmers while also failing to reform the underlying current safety net – for example, through improvements to the Whole Farm Revenue Protection Program, or re-envisioning commodity programs entirely.

Specialty Crop Assistance Framework

For specialty crop farmers, the bill establishes a permanent framework for future emergency assistance programs in response to an adverse event, including economic crises or market disruptions. The program – which shares some similarities with the Marketing Assistance for Speciality Crops (MASC) program, but is not identical – would calculate payments based on sales from the previous market year, and establish a consistent mechanism and methodology framework to distribute emergency aid for specialty crop producers (Section 1003).

Specialty crop farmers are often left out of assistance programs for a number of reasons. As exemplified through the Assistance for Specialty Crop Farmers (ASCF) program, programs that provide assistance based on acreage for each given crop – a structure that typically works well for commodities – do not work well for specialty crop farmers. While the proposed framework is a step in the right direction, as written, Section 1003 does not adequately provide coverage for specialty crop farmers of all sizes and experience levels. It establishes high payment limits of $900,000 for farmers deriving at least 75% of their income from farming activities, potentially concentrating any limited funds made available to a smaller number of large producers. While specialty crop farmers may need higher payments than commodity growers due to higher costs, payment limits should still be structured to responsibly and equitably deliver program resources. The proposed program would also exclude new producers who were impacted by an adverse event but had no recorded sales in the year prior. The MASC program accounted for this by allowing for certified expected sales for the following year to qualify for payments.

State Disaster Block Grant Authority

FFNSA also gives the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) the authority to administer future disaster programs through state block grants (Section 1004). State administered disaster programs often prove to be a double-edged sword: while they have the potential to offer more tailored support for a state’s unique experience with a disaster, in practice, they often face significant delays in funding disbursement, create inconsistent standards across states, and reduce USDA’s ability to ensure compliance across programs and reduce duplicative payments. Many of these challenges arise from the lack of familiarity State Departments of Agriculture have with USDA disaster programs and vice versa. As written, FFNSA provides few protections to ensure these issues do not hinder relief efforts when administered through state block grants. An amendment offered by Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-CA-24) to address some of these issues by requiring standardization across future block grants – including proportional distribution of funds, consistent eligibility standards, and data reporting requirements, among other provisions – was filed but withdrawn without a vote.

Currently, USDA is in the process of administering nearly a dozen state block grants – first initiated by the American Relief Act in response to extreme weather events – to replace or supplement the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program. Highlighting the challenges of administering these programs, only two of these states have launched their relief programs to date. Virginia completed their program as of November 2025, and Georgia’s supplemental grant program recently opened applications as of March 2026. North Carolina will be next to open applications for part of its program by the end of March. Other programs for Northeastern states and Hawaii, which opted for replacement state block grants in lieu of eligibility through the national SDRP program, have yet to be announced, with no timetable for distributing funds. As a result, some farmers and ranchers who experienced losses as long ago as 2023 are still awaiting aid from USDA. 

Farming and ranching are among the hardest careers to pursue due in part to high barriers to entry. This makes it critical for the next farm bill to support farmers’ access to farmland and to finance high startup costs. The FFNSA takes some steps in this direction, and a couple of steps back. 

Notably, the bill raises the limits that any individual borrower may owe to a lender for USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) direct and guaranteed operating and farm ownership loans. NSAC is supportive of increased limits to microloans from $50,000 to $100,000, and recognizes the need to increase direct operating and ownership loans to keep pace with rising costs of inputs and assets. FFNSA would also increase direct operating loans from $400,000 to $750,000, direct farm ownership loans from $600,000 to $850,000, and guaranteed farm ownership loans from $1.75 million to $3.5 million, and guaranteed operating loans from $1.75 million to $3 million. However, there are several considerations and potential consequences to these changes. Increasing such limits without conditions would continue to allow FSA-backed loans to finance the development of new and expanded Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Further, FFNSA raises these limits without any increase to the total funding authorization of FSA to make these loans, subject to annual appropriations. This could result in bigger loans to fewer farms, and limit available funding for smaller operations (Sections 5105, 5202, 5203, 5402). 

FFNSA would problematically provide sole authority to the Farm Credit Administration to regulate the Farm Credit System (FCS) (Section 5504). This provision would remove any regulatory authority from other entities, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and further erode the CFPB’s demographic reporting requirements in Rule 1071 for loans administered through FCS. This provision would also limit public information regarding who is receiving agricultural loans and inhibit efforts to ensure that all farmers and ranchers have equal access to credit.

NSAC supports the authorization of FSA to restructure distressed guaranteed loans into direct loans for distressed borrowers. However, the provision would require borrowers to already be in monetary default, forcing borrowers to be on the brink of financial crisis before qualifying for this refinancing opportunity. A more expansive refinancing authority, as included in the Fair Credit for Farmers Act (S.3126/H.R. 6169), would provide more tools for farmers and ranchers to solidify their finances before reaching the brink. The FFNSA also leaves out other important protections for farmers and ranchers, such as requiring FSA concurrence prior to any asset liquidation (Section 5103).

The FFNSA does take small steps to streamline access to farm ownership loans for beginning farmers, including reducing the experience requirement to be eligible from three years to two years, with a series of conditions under which USDA may issue loans to farmers with only one year of experience. To help farmers navigate the rapid turnaround of land sales, the FFNSA also directs USDA to establish a pilot program for farmers to receive advanced pre-approval on farm ownership loans, and establishes an expedited approval process for loans under $1 million (Section 5102, 5110, 5111).

Further, while the bill does not include most provisions from the Fair Credit for Farmers Act to reform the imbalanced National Appeals Division (NAD) process, it would at least reform the current standard where individual farmers must carry the burden of proof to challenge their denial by a federal agency. Instead, USDA would need to prove that its decision to deny a loan to a farmer was righteous. That is an important step in the right direction (Section 12203). 

Finally, the bill meets the bare minimum of reauthorizing the Heirs’ Property Intermediary Relending Program, though it positively authorizes USDA to enter into cooperative agreements to provide legal services to underserved heirs (Section 5109).

Unfortunately, FFNSA fails to initiate any meaningful reforms that would alleviate bureaucratic red tape and streamline access to crop insurance for the small, diversified, and direct-to-consumer farmers and ranchers who are too often left behind. With only 13 percent of farms insured against worsening floods, droughts, and other disasters, the next farm bill must take steps to expand access to the federal crop insurance program, rather than exacerbating the program’s structural flaws and incentivizing risky farming behaviors. 

FFNSA requires an annual review of challenges to access Whole-Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP), but does nothing else to improve the program or reduce barriers to accessing this product (Section 11012). The provision is largely unnecessary, as such USDA reviews are already common practice, and the barriers and corresponding solutions to accessing WFRP are well-documented. An amendment to add the Save Our Small Farms Act (H.R.2435, S.1217), which would remove many of the well-established barriers and challenges with WFRP, was offered but rejected on party lines during the committee’s mark up. 

The bill amends the eligibility definitions for the additional crop insurance premium discounts passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB, P.L. 119-21), including veteran producers for the premium discounts (Section 11007). While this is an important investment for beginning and veteran producers, it will have minimal impact if not paired with more foundational reforms to streamline paperwork and address the disincentive that agents experience to sell insurance to small and diversified farms. 

The bill also establishes a Specialty Crop Advisory Committee to inform the development and expansion of crop insurance. But without conditions that any of its appointees represent beginning, small, diversified, or organic farmers, it will not reflect the specific needs of the full diversity of American specialty crop farms (Section 11001).

FFNSA also directs several research initiatives to explore new insurance products, including limited weather based index policies, but misses the opportunity to enshrine an index-based policy as comprehensive as found in the WEATHER Act (S.231) and the Save Our Small Farms Act (Sec. 11014). While failing to address barriers or reduce the costs of crop insurance for many uninsured operations, the bill codifies increased reimbursement rates included in OBBB for administrative and operating costs for private Approved Insurance Providers (AIPs) (Section 11009). 

The FFNSA fails to include any provisions that would combat consolidation in the food system. 

In fact, there are a series of concerning provisions regarding competition in the meat processing sector (Section 12111). These provisions create an exemption within the Packers and Stockyards Act regulations that allows market agencies – including stockyard owners – to purchase or invest in meatpackers’ operations. While this is ostensibly intended to generate more private investment within western cattle processing operations, this provision could also lead to instances in which the only stockyard owner in the area also has a controlling interest in the only meatpacking operation in the area. This leads to vertical integration and coordination along the processing supply chain. This possibility is concerning, especially considering that the FFNSA sets the size limit for the exemption at the point where plants or companies operating in the top quintile of processing could qualify for it. The FFNSA also includes a provision to restrict a state’s ability to set its own agricultural policies, specifically nullifying state laws such as California’s Proposition 12 (Section 12006). This would significantly harm smaller independent ranchers who have invested in and benefited from such policies for years, and serve to benefit the largest corporations and agribusinesses seeking to remove such regulations.

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