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farm bill
The Farm Bill Is a Health Bill
It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people.
Aug 09, 2026
Wanìshi means thank you in the Lenape language. This is the lyrical word we recently had the privilege of learning from a principal emissary from the Piscataway Indian Nation, and experiencing together. Wanìshi for the quiet moments between hard conversations and watching sunsets, where we shared in the spirit of collaboration, together with 18 other thinkers and doers who are deeply troubled by the trajectory of public agriculture policy, and its historically principal vehicle, the Farm Bill.
We embraced and shared in this collaborative mindset over the three days we spent with the America the Beautiful for All Coalition’s Legacy Lands workgroup in Maryland. The Farm Bill was one of the issues we discussed. A bill currently being treated by politicians as technical, as boring, as someone else's problem. When in our realities, it is none of those things. The Farm Bill decides who eats and who doesn't. It decides who is healthy and whose health is negotiable.
Between us, we have spent a combined five decades serving the communities this bill affects: rural families losing food, farmworkers losing protections, Black farmers losing land, tribal nations losing voice. So at that convening, and with this piece, we are expressing plainly a reality every farmer, rancher, and all of us who steward land intimately know. That land is a body and must be nourished. That we cannot cut it into fundable pieces and expect the pieces to bleed separately. The Farm Bill is a health bill. It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people. We do not view the content of the draft as a public health crisis because we have been trained to view it as agricultural policy. But it is, in fact, a public health crisis, and that crisis has a physical address: every community where conservation funding has been cut and every family living downstream of the farms and lands that lost it.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed on the Fourth of July last year, cut $187 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). More than 4.5 million people have lost their food assistance since then. In rural counties where the nearest grocery store is a 40-minute drive and the nearest doctor is farther, losing SNAP is not a policy change. It is a sentence. It means a child eating less, and then eating worse, and then showing up in an emergency room that is itself understaffed and underfunded. The Senate Farm Bill draft does not restore a single dollar.
That land is a body and must be nourished. That we cannot cut it into fundable pieces and expect the pieces to bleed separately. The Farm Bill is a health bill. It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people.
Both versions of the new bill cut funding for the conservation programs that keep farmland productive and water clean. The Senate draft alone slashes nearly $2 billion from EQIP, the program that helps small farmers put cover crops in, manage nutrients, and protect water. When those programs shrink, the runoff increases. Babies, adults, pets, and wildlife in the communities downstream all drink that water.
The agency responsible for delivering conservation to farmers is disappearing. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) lost nearly a quarter of its staff in one year. One hundred and forty-one counties went from having NRCS employees to having none. These were the people who helped farmers manage nutrients, reduce fertilizer runoff, and protect water. In their absence, nitrate from agricultural runoff enters rural drinking water unchecked. Research links nitrate contamination to colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and birth defects in newborns, at levels below what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. The communities drinking that water are the same small rural towns that just lost their NRCS offices. A beginning farmer in southern Georgia or a small rancher in northern New Mexico picks up the phone and no one answers. Their neighbors downstream drink what runs off the fields no one is helping them manage.
For Latino communities across the rural West, acequias, the community irrigation systems that have sustained families for centuries, depend on the conservation programs this bill is cutting. A farmer in the San Luis Valley who has irrigated land the way her family has for six generations does not experience a conservation cut as a line item. She experiences it as a ditch that doesn't flow, a garden that doesn't grow, a family that buys what it used to harvest.
Black families once farmed 16 million acres in this country. Today they hold barely over 1%. Heirs' property, land passed down without clear title, is one of the mechanisms through which that loss continues: A single partition sale can erase a century of family ownership in an afternoon. The families who lose their land don't just lose wealth. They lose the foundation for food sovereignty, the one asset that could have fed a family, a neighborhood, a generation. A deed problem becomes a health problem, passed down the same way the land was supposed to be.
As we watch this Farm Bill, we carry with us the word our Piscataway colleague shared. Wanìshi. Thank you. We offer it now in the spirit of collaboration.
We will offer it again, in the spirit of gratitude, when Congress writes this bill for all of us.
We are waiting.
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USDA Agribusiness Integration With Israel Subsidizes Settler Expansionism
While Congress advances the US-Israeli military integration plan, Israel and the US attempt to expand their “soft power” through agritechnology development across the region.
Aug 02, 2026
Congress’ proposed National Defense Authorization Act’s Section 219 ‘US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative’ would require the countries to expand intelligence sharing and grow joint weapons research and production, including artificial intelligence surveillance, lethal drones, arms, tanks, and munitions. This comes as Israel’s military decimation of Gaza, apartheid rule over the West Bank, and occupation of southern Lebanon have triggered opposition across the world. Meanwhile, a more subtle, parallel violence grows in the form of US-funded Israeli agricultural occupation of Palestinian lands. This partnership expands Israel’s regional control spatially and financially, with US backing, but with little public knowledge.
Three years into the deliberate starvation of Gaza, the US and Israel have expanded and entrenched their longstanding agricultural cooperation through the US-Israeli Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD-ISUS). Despite global allegations of genocide against Palestine, weaponizing hunger and even of food aid itself, BARD-ISUS just approved $13.2M US for research and development of Israeli agritech on Palestinian lands.
Established in 1978 by the US and Israeli governments, BARD-ISUS has granted a total of nearly $430 million USD (as of 2024) to over 1,700 projects. In the US, the USDA Agricultural Research Service is on 19% of projects and top universities include University of California Davis (11% of projects); Cornell University (7%); and University of Florida (5%). Universities or public agencies in 48 US states (all except Alaska and North Dakota) have hosted hundreds of BARD-ISUS grants over decades. Nearly $84 million USD has gone to research grants partnering with California land grant institutions alone. The US Farm Bill has allocated additional funds to BARD-ISUS to go directly to agritech research, but also to fund Israeli postdoctoral fellows to be placed at US universities and Israeli graduate students to conduct research with US teams.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives version of the Farm Bill (HR 7567—Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026), tucks in a proposed expansion of BARD to signatories of the Abraham Accords—a 2020 mechanism by which the Trump regime pressures regional countries to normalize relations with Israel, in this case with additional promises for hundreds of millions of dollars of agritech transfer. The House passed another bipartisan amendment (H.R.7587 United States-Israel Agriculture Cooperation Improvement and Expansion Act) reiterating the expansion of BARD to Abraham Accord signatories, which also fast tracks commercialization of ag tech research in and with Israeli institutions and companies, while expanding the overall budget of BARD to $12M each year until 2030. The US Senate Committee on Agriculture has approved the extension of BARD-ISUS funding until 2031, with an allocation of $20 million per year ($80 million overall), atop the lucrative annual proceedings BARD receives from its $110 million endowment. Tellingly, as of 2020, BARD funding can now go to Israeli agricultural research projects in the West Bank’s Area C and the occupied Golan Heights.
The funding increase to BARD-ISUS and expansion of eligibility to Abraham Accords nations indicate a coercion of regional powers to normalize relations with Israel at a time of mass popular support for Palestinian sovereignty.
While BARD research appears at first glance to be apolitical “basic science” efforts to “improve crop productivity and resilience,” their website contains no mention of Palestine, or even euphemistic mentions of conflicts over land in the region. The well-funded BARD-ISUS has “generated a multitude of agricultural innovations, practices, and patents, impacting economies, industries, academia, and human health in both countries and beyond, with a high return on investment”—a claim that erases Palestinian land and agriculture, and distracts from the violence of settler occupation and genocide.
This year’s BARD grants were the “the highest funding amount awarded in the last 20 years,” indicating an entrenchment of US and Israeli academia and agrobiotech industries. The domestic relevance for this BARD expansion becomes acute amid the Farm Bill’s deference to the 2025 HR 1’s $187 Billion cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Even atop the ongoing deprivations in Gaza, BARD expansion comes as millions of people in the US in need are being kicked off SNAP, USDA employees are facing mass layoffs, and US farmers are reeling from the impacts that US and Israel’s attacks on Iran have had on fertilizers and fuel prices. Increasing funding for Israeli ag tech redirects resources away from urgent domestic agrifood needs.
The BARD-ISUS expansion also comes at a time when Israel and the US rapidly expand their targeting and destruction of not just Palestinian food systems and agricultural production, but rural and agrarian communities across Southwest Asia, in what Paul Kohlbry has termed “agrarian annihilation.” Israel continues to target Palestinian and Lebanese farmers and food systems, from the deliberate starvation of Gaza documented by international law and global civil society to the destruction of farms and waterways in the Occupied West Bank and now southern Lebanon. Israeli forces, funded by the US, continue to attack Palestinian villages, destroy agricultural lands, capture waterways, and kill farmers and pastoralists throughout the West Bank—with settler attacks hitting an “all-time high” in July 2026 according to the United Nations. The West Bank’s Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills have long endured Israeli settlements and violence—all of which have proliferated in recent years and especially in recent months. In the Jordan Valley, where an estimated 65,000 Palestinians farm some of the most fertile land in the West Bank, B’Tselem has recorded repeated demolitions of Palestinian water cisterns—structures that families build to collect rainwater because they are legally barred from connecting to piped water networks.
The expansion of USDA-funded agritechnologies—and BARD pressure for corporate commercialization—undermines the viability of Palestinian and Lebanese food security and food sovereignty; unchecked, it jeopardizes the long-term stability and viability of rural communities in the region who are increasingly displaced with these US-subsidized high-tech ag research projects. Rather than establish accountability for Israeli forces’ years of deliberate famine in Gaza, such funding subsidizes more land dispossession and obscures the well-documented starvation of Palestine with claims of agribiotechnology research for Global Food Security. BARD-ISUS just launched a new Food Security Technology Accelerator to “support collaborative R&D projects between Israeli and American agritech researchers and corporations, so as to “foster innovation in food security.” How can the countries responsible for massive food insecurity and famine across the region claim to be able to “foster food security”?
While Congress advances the US-Israeli military integration plan, Israel and the US attempt to expand their “soft power” through agritechnology development across the region. The funding increase to BARD-ISUS and expansion of eligibility to Abraham Accords nations indicate a coercion of regional powers to normalize relations with Israel at a time of mass popular support for Palestinian sovereignty. This would deploy more USDA funds to agritech development in countries willing to support an Israeli regime perpetrating genocide in Palestine, invading Lebanon, and initiating a war with Iran. In short, this USDA multimillion dollar agribusiness integration with Israel subsidizes expansionism and impunity—further undermining any authentic peace in the region.
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'Unconscionable': Outrage as GOP Farm Bill Omits Plan to Delay Looming Food Aid Disaster
"The harm unfolding across the country is already far greater than many anticipated," warned one expert.
Jun 24, 2026
Senate Republicans unveiled annual farm legislation this week that would do nothing to address the worsening nationwide hunger crisis spurred by President Donald Trump and the GOP's unprecedented assault on federal food aid.
The draft bill introduced Tuesday by Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, omits a Democratic proposal to delay a provision of the 2025 Republican budget law that will require states to pay a share of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for the first time in the program's history, while also increasing states' share of administrative costs. State leaders have warned of massive budgetary impacts that could result in even deeper cuts to food aid—and potentially force states to withdraw from the SNAP program entirely.
Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), said it was "unconscionable" for Republicans to do nothing in the face of large-scale loss of food aid—including among children—and a looming budgetary disaster for states across the country.
"The harm unfolding across the country is already far greater than many anticipated, with more than 4 million people losing SNAP through March," Cox said in a statement Tuesday. "Even more people will lose the vital food assistance they need to afford groceries unless Congress immediately delays HR 1’s unprecedented shift of significant new SNAP costs to states."
Without congressional action, the SNAP cost-shifting provision of the Republican budget law will take effect on October 1, 2027. Survey data released this month shows that nearly 30% of US state governments believe they could be forced to narrow SNAP eligibility to cope with the new costs, which are expected to average $218 million per state. Eleven percent of states "identified withdrawing from SNAP as a potential risk," according to the poll conducted by the American Public Human Services Association.
It really seems like it should be a bigger deal that 11% of states who responded to this survey identified *withdrawing from SNAP entirely* as a potential risk of the massive cost shift that's about to hit state budgets thanks to H.R. 1. https://t.co/RbsY9LNdLv pic.twitter.com/TKOQIIK0ci
— Katie Bergh (@Katie_Bergh) June 23, 2026
Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, said Tuesday that the Republican farm bill "ignores the needs of tens of millions of people, including families with children, older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans, who are finding it increasingly difficult to put food on the table."
"By shifting program costs to states, expanding time limits, and putting a cap on future benefit adjustments, HR 1 has undermined SNAP, the stability of families, communities, and local economies, and weakened state budgets," FitzSimons warned. "The SNAP benefit cost shift to states and increase in states’ administrative costs will force states to make impossible choices: reduce education funding, delay infrastructure investments, cut public health programs, constrain Medicaid spending, raise taxes, or reduce access to SNAP itself."
Senate Republicans unveiled their farm legislation amid a growing hunger and affordability crisis that experts say is directly attributable to Trump-GOP policies, from blanket tariffs to the war on Iran to SNAP cuts that the new bill—like the House version—does nothing to reverse.
Survey data released Tuesday by the No Kid Hungry campaign found that 55% of low-income families with children have had to cut back on groceries recently to make ends meet. The poll also found that 90% of families surveyed reported that they "would have to cut back significantly on food" if they lost SNAP benefits.
"Rising prices are making it harder for families to afford basic necessities," George Kelemen, senior vice president of the No Kid Hungry campaign, said in a statement. "That’s why SNAP’s grocery benefit, which helps feed about 40 million Americans including nearly 16 million children, is a vital support for helping them put food on the table."
"This SNAP crisis is too dangerous to ignore," Kelemen added. "Reasonable steps must be included in this farm bill to delay the cost-sharing until states have the time they need to implement all the complex changes handed to them."
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Mark June Dairy Month with Industry-Wide Reform
Congress should pass measures like the Milk From Family Dairies Act (MFDA), which ensures farmers a decent price without driving up costs for consumers and relying on taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Jun 16, 2026
Sometimes the truth stares you right in the face.
Case in point—in the middle of his agricultural roundtable event with farmers and Republican representatives held this past June 5 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, President Donald Trump took a moment to reflect about a different meeting he once had with another group of producers. As the president remembered, he told the farmers, “I’m going to get you a subsidy.” To his surprise they responded that they didn’t want subsidies, but rather, “a level playing field.”
It would be easy to gloss over the truth in Trump’s recollection, especially as he rambled on about many things unrelated to farming such as repairing monuments around Washington DC, his disdain for Democrats, and how the Southern border was closed to migrants. This, as NFL Hall-of-Famer Joe Thomas sat to Trump’s side and drew gushing remarks from the president about the retired player’s body.
Unlike Thomas, most farmers cannot draw on millions to stay on the land. Instead, they can turn to the government to promote fair markets. As much could happen now, during June Dairy Month, as the Farm Bill is working through Congress and much needed relief could come by including in the ominous piece of legislation key reforms to the dairy industry.
Instead of such piecemeal fixes, the dairy industry needs industry-wide reform, as the farmers who spoke with Trump once said, “to level the playing field.”
To be fair, discussion during Trump’s roundtable did include some dairy policies.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, for instance, alluded to trade deals that would increase exports. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), whose district the roundtable took place in and who appears in danger of losing his seat to the daughter of dairy farmers, Rebecca Cooke, touted the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act. The act restores whole and reduced fat (2%) milk options at schools.
The problem is that both initiatives don’t do much.
First, the evidence shows that increasing exports doesn’t keep people farming.
Farm Bureau data shows that since 2016, total dairy export value has doubled from just over $4 million to over $8 in 2024. But during this same period, the number of licensed dairy herds has collapsed, from over 40,000, to under 25,000.
Meanwhile, serving milk at school lunch does open markets. And nationwide, since 2024, more people have been consuming milk after years of decline. But even amid rising demand, in 2025 Wisconsin saw a 700% increase in bankruptcies, particularly hitting dairy farmers.
Instead of such piecemeal fixes, the dairy industry needs industry-wide reform, as the farmers who spoke with Trump once said, “to level the playing field.”
The proposal that would advance such change is the Milk From Family Dairies Act (MFDA). Created by the National Family Farm Coalition and endorsed by over 90 organizations, the MFDA ensures farmers a decent price without driving up costs for consumers and relying on taxpayer-funded subsidies.
The principle behind the MFDA is supply management, similar to the system in Canada. In this system, consumer supply demands are balanced with prices that farmers are paid for their milk in regular meetings of stakeholders. For farmers, receiving compensation for at least the cost of production is a big deal, as since 2021, even taking into consideration advantages of increasing herd size, dairy producers across the board have consistently had to sell their milk at a loss as the price of feed, seed, and fertilizer rise.
Consumers benefit as the MFDA makes investments in local dairy processors, increasing competition to drive down prices, and corporate concentration in the industry is targeted with anti-trust enforcement to curtail price gouging by large-scale retailers at the grocery store. Currently, taxpayers pick up the tab for farmers who have financial troubles with subsidies, or direct payments, which Trump has handed out repeatedly across his administrations.
Unlike Joe Thomas, most farmers don’t have millions to keep them going. Instead, they have the government, which should ensure fair markets. So, to mark June Dairy month, our lawmakers should listen to farmers, level the playing field, and include elements from the MFDA into the Farm Bill.
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The Farm Bill Feeds Corporations, Not Communities
America prides itself on supporting small and local businesses, yet decades of agricultural policy decisions signal nothing but disdain for our small and local farms.
May 29, 2026
Three years behind schedule, the US House of Representatives passed a Farm Bill last month. Despite thousands of independent, humane farmers sounding the alarm that American livestock production is hurtling toward a breaking point, Congress chose to ignore those voices in favor of propping up corporate profits with more handouts to industrial agriculture.
America prides itself on supporting small and local businesses, yet decades of agricultural policy decisions signal nothing but disdain for our small and local farms. The overwhelming majority of taxpayer dollars in the House Farm Bill will funnel directly into the hands of the largest farms and agricultural corporations, while neglecting the needs of the small, independent producers who make up over 85% of all farms in our country. As a result, since the most recent Farm Bill in 2018, over 158,000 farms have had to close their gates, while shareholder value has skyrocketed for the few meatpacking monopolies that maintain a vertically-integrated vice grip on our nation’s meat supply.
Here’s the real kicker—even with access to the endless handouts industrial agriculture has received for decades, we have an increasingly fragile food system. Far from the safe, abundant, and affordable food supply their taglines promise, the factory farming of animals in confinement systems is responsible for major public health threats, the degradation of our soil and waterways, and the hollowing out of our rural communities. Cancer rates in industrial ag-heavy states are rising at alarming rates, and once-thriving small towns are falling victim to corporate capture.
The House Farm Bill includes a provision that independent farmers have made clear drives meat-packer consolidation and robs us of markets that voters in several states demanded: the “Save Our Bacon” (SOB) Act, which, far from saving any bacon, would further entrench a fragile system that profits from cruel confinement and extreme overcrowding of pigs. When our current food system faces extreme stressors like the pandemic or bird flu, these supply chains break down and supermarket shelves quickly empty of meat, eggs, and dairy products. Meanwhile smaller independent farmers like us who use more humane, resilient practices that prioritize the welfare of animals, people, and the environment are able to continue feeding our communities without disruptions.
The Senate now has the opportunity to right the House’s Farm Bill wrongs, restoring and expanding funding for local and regional food systems, and removing favors to industry lobby groups like the Save Our Bacon Act.
What we know is that consumers are fed up, and no longer buy the tired argument that more humane and healthy farming methods are unrealistic, or that smaller farms can’t feed America. Consumers know that pasture-raised animals are healthier for both themselves and the environment, and that resilient local farms are critical for their communities.
Government policy chooses what food gets to be accessible and which types of farms survive, and we must start making better choices. Expanding investment into independent, local meat processing; ensuring the regulation of dubious and misleading label claims; and increasing fair funding opportunities and access to capital for pasture-based farms are just a handful of commonsense reforms that would help level the playing field. The Senate now has the opportunity to right the House’s Farm Bill wrongs, restoring and expanding funding for local and regional food systems, and removing favors to industry lobby groups like the Save Our Bacon Act.
We already know how to raise healthy animals in more humane, pasture-based systems. That these farms are better for all involved than factory farms is clear to anyone on the ground in farming communities across America. And we believe it would be obvious to legislators in Congress if they took the time to come see them, which is why we have joined with other pasture-based farmers across the country to form the FACE Ag Network (Farmers for Animals, Communities, and the Environment).
We may not have the deep pockets of industrial agriculture interests, but we have power in the real stories of how our farms in Delaware County, Iowa, and St. Helena Parish, Louisiana are feeding our communities and revitalizing our local economies. In a recent letter to House and Senate leadership, we outlined a Farm Bill policy platform that would help uplift thousands of farmers, inviting lawmakers to visit our farms and witness firsthand how pasture-based farming systems are building a more resilient food system. And we have a message for the lawmakers about to decide our future in the Farm Bill:
Agribusiness interests have had their chance to design farm policy, and it isn’t working. It’s time to listen to independent farmers who know what their communities, animals, and land need. It’s time to rethink the way we invest federal dollars, and finally support farms producing the kind of food Americans want and deserve, rather than subsidizing products that actively harm our communities.
We invite you to come stand in our pastures and learn first-hand why backing the farms that produce the most humane, healthy, and high-quality food is the soundest investment you could make in our nation’s food system.
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The Farm Bill’s 'Save Our Bacon' Provision Attacks State's Rights and Voters
Democrats and Republicans who claim to respect states’ rights should reject this federal power grab and defend the voters, farmers, and small businesses who have already moved forward.
May 13, 2026
Congress has a choice to make: Protect democracy and states’ rights, or hand a blank check to Big Pork lobbyists who refuse to accept that voters, family farmers, and the marketplace have already moved on.
Buried in the House-passed Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (Farm Bill) is a provision known as the “Save Our Bacon Act,” a slickly named attempt to wipe out state farm animal welfare laws like California’s Proposition 12. The House passed the farm bill on April 30 by a vote of 224-200, after the Rules Committee blocked a bipartisan amendment that had the votes to pass on the floor that would have stripped the Save Our Bacon language from the bill.
Now the fight moves to the Senate. And every Democrat and Republican who claims to respect states’ rights should be on notice: This provision is not about saving bacon. It is about overriding voters, punishing family farmers who adapted, and using federal power to erase state laws that powerful corporate interests dislike.
Proposition 12 was passed by nearly 63% of California voters in 2018. At its core, the law set a basic standard for certain animal products sold in California, including pork: A mother pig should have enough space to stand up, turn around, and extend her limbs. That is not radical. It is the bare minimum.
The message should be simple: Respect the voters, respect the farmers, respect the courts, and keep this attack on states’ rights out of the Farm Bill.
The pork lobby sued anyway, arguing that California had no right to decide what products could be sold within its own borders. They took that argument all the way to the US Supreme Court—and lost, even before a conservative court. In 2023, the court upheld Prop 12.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and its allies went to Congress and asked lawmakers to do what the courts would not: nullify the will of voters through federal legislation. The Farm Bill is their latest vehicle to pass the Save Our Bacon Act.
Supporters dress this up as a defense of interstate commerce. But let’s be honest about what it really is: a federal override of state decision-making.
That should alarm conservatives who believe Washington should not dictate every policy choice from the top down. It should alarm progressives who believe voters have the right to pass laws protecting animals, consumers, workers, and communities. And it should alarm anyone who thinks Congress should be solving actual problems in the farm bill—not sneaking in special favors for a trade group that lost in court, lost at the ballot box, and is now trying to win through backroom legislative maneuvering.
The irony is that Prop 12 has not caused the collapse its opponents predicted. Pork has remained on California shelves. Major producers have adapted. Nearly all major food companies now offer Prop 12-compliant pork. Many farmers invested in compliant systems and rely on the market that Prop 12 created.
In fact, some of the loudest claims against Prop 12 have aged terribly. The NPPC’s own vice president testified before Congress while describing himself as a fourth-generation hog farmer who produces Prop 12-compliant pork—then argued against the very law he already follows. That contradiction says everything. Compliance is possible. The industry knows it. The marketplace has shown it.
The people who stand to lose from the Save Our Bacon Act are not the multinational corporations that have already adjusted. They are the family farmers who spent money to meet higher standards, the small and mid-sized producers who gained access to premium markets, and the voters whose laws would be wiped away because a lobby did not like the outcome.
This is why opposition to the provision has not fallen neatly along party lines. A bipartisan group led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, sought to remove the language from the Farm Bill, joined by Republicans and Democrats including Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), David Valadao (R-Calif.), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Mike Lawler, (R-NY), and Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), according to industry reporting.
That bipartisan resistance matters. It shows this is not a left-versus-right issue. It is a question of whether Congress will respect state authority or gut it when a powerful industry lobby complains loudly enough.
For Democrats, the choice should be easy. Prop 12 reflects humane treatment, consumer transparency, and democratic accountability. It was passed by voters and upheld by the courts. A farm bill should not become a vehicle for rolling back animal welfare progress and silencing state-level reform.
For Republicans, the choice should be just as easy—at least for those who mean what they say about states’ rights. If California voters cannot decide that pork sold in California must meet basic animal welfare and food safety standards, then what exactly does “states’ rights” mean? Does it only apply when a state passes laws that corporate lobbyists like?
The Save Our Bacon Act is also a warning shot far beyond animal welfare. If Congress can erase state laws protecting farm animals because they affect interstate commerce, what stops future Congresses from targeting state laws on food safety, environmental protection, public health, labeling, or consumer standards? Opponents have warned that this kind of language could threaten hundreds of state agricultural laws and undermine state and local authority well beyond Prop 12.
That is why lawmakers should strip this language from any final farm bill.
The farm bill should support farmers, strengthen food systems, expand nutrition access, invest in conservation, and build resilience. It should not be hijacked by a narrow industry faction trying to relitigate a Supreme Court loss. And it certainly should not punish the farmers and companies that did the right thing by adapting to higher standards.
Animal welfare progress is real. Across the food system, companies, producers, and consumers are moving toward more humane practices. Cage-free eggs now make up a major and growing share of the market. In pork production, many supply chains have reduced or eliminated gestation stalls. The trend is clear: Extreme confinement is becoming harder to defend and easier to replace.
The progress did not happen by accident. It happened because voters demanded it, farmers built it, companies responded to it, and advocates kept pushing. The Save Our Bacon Act would turn back the clock—not because the system failed, but because it succeeded.
Congress should not reward obstruction. It should not let Big Pork use the farm bill to override voters. And it should not allow a fake “states’ rights” argument to become a federal power grab against the states that actually exercised their rights.
Democrats and Republicans who genuinely believe in democracy, federalism, and fair markets should stand together and reject the Farm Bill if it includes the Save Our Bacon Act language.
The message should be simple: Respect the voters, respect the farmers, respect the courts, and keep this attack on states’ rights out of the Farm Bill. Call your US senators today and tell them to oppose Big Pork’s attack on democracy and oppose any Farm Bill version with the "Save Our Bacon" language included.
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Despite Defeat of Pesticide Liability Shield, House Farm Bill Still 'Has Industry Fingerprints All Over It'
Support for stripping the pesticide provisions, said one advocate, "is proof that the Farm Bill should strengthen our food system, support farmers, and safeguard public health—not serve as a vehicle for corporate giveaways."
Apr 30, 2026
The diverse coalition opposed to a legislative "liability shield" for the pesticide industry celebrated on Thursday after the US House of Representatives stripped it out of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026—though progressive voices still sounded the alarm about the chamber's approval of the amended bill.
Dozens of Republicans and all but six Democrats backed Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's (R-Fla.) amendment targeting the protections for the pesticide industry. The 280-142 vote removed Sections 10205, 10206, and 10207 from the Farm Bill—which was later approved 224-200, with support from 14 Democrats and all but three Republicans.
"Major pesticide issues haven't been debated on the House floor in a very long time," said Jason Davidson, senior food and agriculture campaigner with Friends of the Earth US, in a statement. "For the people to win over the size, influence, and money of the pesticide industry is a remarkable display of grassroots power and a tremendous victory for Americans' ability to hold these companies accountable."
The House vote came just days after pesticide critics held "The People v. Poison" rally outside the US Supreme Court as the justices heard arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, which is expected to have sweeping implications for cancer patients trying to take on the maker of the weedkiller Roundup, whose key active ingredient is glyphosate.
Bayer—which bought Monsanto in 2018—and the US Environmental Protection Agency insist glyphosate is safe, even though the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it as a probable carcinogen to humans over a decade ago.
Despite President Donald Trump campaigning on a promise to "Make America Healthy Again," he has often served the pesticide industry, including by siding with Bayer in the case before the high court and signing a February executive order mandating production of glyphosate—a measure that also included a liability shield.
Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) on Wednesday introduced the No Immunity for Glyphosate Act to reverse Trump's order. The bill's lead sponsors in the House, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), were among those cheering the passage of Luna's amendment on Thursday.
"Industrial agriculture's pesticide addiction is poisoning America," declared Food and Water Watch senior food policy analyst Rebecca Wolf. "From the fields of Iowa to the halls of Congress, advocates have made our voices clear: Bayer's cruel Cancer Gag campaign has no place in our communities. US farm policy must support farmers and consumers, not the corporate overlords pulling the strings at our expense."
Wolf's group praised the defeat of the pesticide language but remains concerned about the EATS/Save Our Bacon Act, conservation cuts, and the Farm Bill's failure to reverse the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act's attack on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
"This Farm Bill has industry fingerprints all over it. By shrinking markets for high-welfare sustainable farmers, and doubling down on devastating cuts to federal food assistance, this pro-factory farm bill will do more harm than good," Wolf warned. "It's time to end the corporate power grab in Washington. This Farm Bill must be dead on arrival in the Senate."
Earthjustice Action legislative director of healthy communities Ranjani Prabhakar was also critical, arguing that "by passing this deeply flawed Farm Bill, House Republicans have doubled down on an approach that puts corporate polluters ahead of farmers, families, and our environment. This legislation weakens long-standing protections for endangered species and critical ecosystems and strips funding from conservation programs that help farmers combat climate change."
The "overwhelming support" for Luna's amendment, Prabhakar said, "is proof that the Farm Bill should strengthen our food system, support farmers, and safeguard public health—not serve as a vehicle for corporate giveaways. We urge the Senate to reject this harmful bill and work toward a solution that truly invests in resilient agriculture, healthy communities, and a sustainable future."
Progressive lawmakers also blasted the broader bill. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that "the Farm Bill is a real opportunity to help farmers and Americans across this country. However, Republicans are using it as a shell to push through permanent cuts to food assistance, even as food prices continue to skyrocket."
"As we take food from hungry kids," she said, referring to SNAP cuts, "this bill also leaves American farmers without a lifeline after they have lost billions thanks to Trump's tariffs. At the end of the day, this bill will make more people hungry and does nothing to address the affordability crisis or struggling workers."
While welcoming that the legislation will no longer shield pesticide manufacturers from liability for their products, Jayapal charged that "today's Farm Bill is a further betrayal of the American people."
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Lessons for Everyone from the Irish Farmer Protests
The demonstrations in Ireland still show how small-scale protests driven by economic malaise can get national attention and prompt change.
Apr 28, 2026
Can anything make farmers turn away from President Donald Trump?
How right-wing populism has gripped rural areas, especially among farmers, is evidenced by the results from the past few presidential elections.
Still, critical challenges are emerging for key constituencies in Trump's base, principally due to the damage that the Iran War is doing in the countryside. Similar conditions pushed Irish farmers to the streets in early April, causing a change among political leadership shortly after, and also helping producers receive some much-needed relief.
That Irish farmers took to the streets shouldn't surprise folks. Earlier this year in January, some of them were also demonstrating, but against the EU-Mercosur trade deal. Not too long ago in 2024, their counterparts across the English Channel throughout many European countries staged weeks of actions to protest free trade deals and excessive bureaucratic regulations. Outside of Europe, in Mexico beginning in 2025 and continuing into 2026, farmers, for many of the same reasons, are blocking roads to demand government intervention to address falling prices for their produce.
The Iran War is placing unnecessary stress on farmers and most other working people. Such conditions are similar to those in Ireland, which led farmers to find common cause with others.
Taking a quick glance at these recent protests taking place around the world, farmers in the United States seem to be asleep at the wheel as producers in many other countries are taking control by challenging their governments and calling for economic justice.
It is not the case that farmers in the US are living large.
In 2025, farm bankruptcies rose by 46% compared with 2024. In 2026, even though there appears to be some movement in a positive direction concerning prices for corn and soy farmers, the jump in what they have to pay for fuel and fertilizer caused by how the Iran War devastates global supply chains is eating into their profits.
Making matters worse, the fertilizer industry is heavily concentrated. A standard metric for measuring concentration—the four-firm concentration ratio (CR4)—shows that the leading four companies in fertilizer markets control about 75% of sales. When that figure is above 40% within a certain industry, according to researchers, then illegal practices such as price-fixing become endemic and consumers pay more than they should at the register. Put simply, the negative economic impacts from the Iran War are compounded by an industry looking for excuses to further jack up prices.
Meanwhile, the current version of the Farm Bill in Congress woefully fails to meet the needs of a farm economy facing crisis.
First, pricing policy to support farmers was decided last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) when the surge in input prices was not on the political radar. Adding insult to injury for our food and farm system, the OBBB also cut food assistance support and climate change initiatives. Speaking to problems farmers are facing, nowhere in the current Farm Bill do we find any discussion of taking on corporate power. Investing in transitioning farms to small-scale, young producers is also mainly an afterthought in the legislation. How hundreds of agribusiness commodity groups support the current version of the legislation, while as many small-scale producer-led groups have voiced opposition, is testament to the fact that our farm policy is about propping up export markets instead of feeding Americans and creating resilient systems.
Trump’s billion-dollar handout to large-scale, mainly high-income farmers at the start of the Iran conflict shows an administration not concerned with sustaining our food system, but with padding the pockets of rich elite allies.
Farmers in Ireland faced similar challenges and felt that they had no choice but to go to the streets. Their actions, drawing comparisons to France’s yellow vests movement, also boasted no clear leaders. In locally organized, spontaneous actions, groups from April 7 to 14 mobilized by blockading strategic oil refineries as well as slowing down traffic on key streets and highways.
Their mobilizations bore some fruit. First, they managed to secure a short-term relief package in the form of direct payments to offset rising fuel costs. Politically, they also caused some political shifts, driving leaders to leave the governing coalition in opposition to how the farmers were treated. While short of generating long-lasting structural change, the demonstrations in Ireland still show how small-scale protests driven by economic malaise can get national attention and prompt change.
Perhaps more importantly for US farmers is how the Irish managed to overcome their relative isolation in society and mobilize with others. Particularly, Irish producers brought truckers to their side, which aided with their efforts at creating roadblocks and slowdowns. Their interests also were aligned, as truckers also have been negatively impacted by rising fuel prices.
With a Farm Bill widely maligned working its way through Congress, legislators have apparently decided to forget about making meaningful changes to our food and farm system. Meanwhile, the Iran War is placing unnecessary stress on farmers and most other working people. Such conditions are similar to those in Ireland, which led farmers to find common cause with others. Now is as good as any other for their counterparts in the US to say enough is enough and denounce a rigged economy that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
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GOP Ripped for 'Grotesque' Farm Bill Full of 'Industry-Backed Poison Pills'
"Chairman Thompson appears poised to check off industry's cruel wish list," one critic warned.
Feb 13, 2026
Advocates for animal welfare, environmental protection, public health, and small family farms fiercely condemned various "industry-backed poison pills" in the long-awaited Farm Bill draft unveiled Friday by a key Republican in the US House of Representatives.
"A new Farm Bill is long overdue, and the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 is an important step forward in providing certainty to our farmers, ranchers, and rural communities," said House Committee on Agriculture Chair Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.) in a statement.
While Thompson has scheduled a markup of the 802-page proposal for February 23, critics aren't waiting to pick apart the bill, which aligns with a 2024 GOP proposal that was also sharply rebuked. The panel's ranking member, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), said that from what she has seen so far, the new legislation "fails to meet the moment facing farmers and working people."
"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 stressed. "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. I strongly urge my Republican colleagues to drop the political charade and work with House Democrats on a truly bipartisan bill to address the very real problems farm country is experiencing right now—before it's too late."
Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, similarly blasted the GOP legislation on Friday, declaring that "this Republican Farm Bill proposal is a grotesque, record-breaking giveaway to the pesticide industry that will free Big Ag to accelerate the flow of dangerous poisons into our nation's food supply and waterways."
"This bill would block people suffering from pesticide-linked cancers from suing pesticide makers, eviscerate the EPA's ability to protect rivers and streams from direct pesticide pollution, and give the pesticide industry an unprecedented veto over extinction-preventing safeguards for our nation's most endangered wildlife," he said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency.
"If Congress passes this monstrosity, it will speed our march toward the dawn of a very real silent spring, a day without fluttering butterflies, chirping frogs, or the chorus of birds at sunrise," Hartl warned. "No one voted for Republicans to allow foreign-owned pesticide conglomerates to dominate the policies that impact the safety of the food every American eats. But this bill leaves no doubt that's exactly who is calling all the shots."
Food & Water Watch (FWW) managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones also sounded the alarm about industry-friendly poison pills, arguing that any draft containing the "Cancer Gag Act" that would shield pesticide companies from liability or the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act—which would block state and local policies designed to protect animal welfare, farm workers, and food safety—"must be dead on arrival."
Sara Amundson, president of Humane World Action Fund—formerly called Humane Society Legislative Fund—also made a case against targeting state restrictions for animals like Proposition 12 in California, which the US Supreme Court let stand in 2023, in response to a challenge by the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation.
"Once again, the House Agriculture Committee Republican majority is bending to the will of a backwards-facing segment of the pork industry by trying to force through a measure to override the preferences of voters in more than a dozen states, upend the decisions of courts all the way up to the Supreme Court, and trample states' rights all at the same time," Amundson said Friday.
The National Family Farm Coalition highlighted that "instead of addressing the widespread concerns of family-scale farmers—ensuring fair prices for farmers, improving credit access, addressing corporate land consolidation, and creating a trade environment that benefits producers—this draft perpetuates the status quo that enriches and empowers corporate agribusiness. The result is an accelerating farm crisis that continues to hollow out rural communities across the US."
Thompson also faced outrage over other policies left out of the GOP legislation—particularly from those calling for the restoration of $187 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump forced through last year with their so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR 1).
"HR 1 shifts unprecedented costs to already cash-strapped states, expands time limits, and strips food benefits away from caregivers, veterans, older workers, people experiencing homelessness, and humanitarian-based noncitizens," noted Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center.
"HR 1 is an unforgiving assault on America's hungry, deliberately dismantling our nation's first line of defense against hunger," she continued. "Yet, when given the opportunity to correct this harm in the latest Farm Bill proposal, Chairman Thompson unveiled a package that will only deepen hunger instead of fixing it. Hunger is not something Congress can afford to ignore."
Jones of FWW said that "families and farmers are hungry for federal policy that supports small- and mid-sized producers and keeps food affordable. Instead, Chairman Thompson appears poised to check off industry's cruel wish list."
"America needs a fair Farm Bill," he emphasized. "It is imperative that this Farm Bill repeal all Trump SNAP cuts and restore full funding to this critical nutrition program; stop the proliferation of factory farms; and support the transition to sustainable, affordable food."
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'I've Never Seen Anything Like It': Trump Policies Leave US Farmers in Dire Straits
"It's a five-alarm fire," one Kentucky soybean farmer said, describing the harmful effects of the president's tariffs.
Sep 16, 2025
As anticipated, US President Donald Trump's economic and immigration policies are harming American farmers' ability to earn a living—and testing the loyalty of one of the president's staunchest bases of support, according to reports published this week.
After Trump slapped 30% tariffs on Chinese imports in May, Beijing retaliated with measures including stopping all purchases of US soybeans. Before the trade war, a quarter of the soybeans—the nation's number one export crop—produced in the United States were exported to China. Trump's tariffs mean American soybean growers can't compete with countries like Brazil, the world's leading producer and exporter of the staple crop and itself the target of a 50% US tariff.
"We depend on the Chinese market. The reason we depend so much on this market is China consumes 61% of soybeans produced worldwide," Kentucky farmer Caleb Ragland, who is president of the American Soybean Association, told News Nation on Monday. "Right now, we have zero sold for this crop that’s starting to be harvested right now.”
Ragland continued:
It’s a five-alarm fire for our industry that 25% of our total sales is currently missing. And right now we are not competitive with Brazil due to the retaliatory tariffs that are in place. Our prices are about 20% higher, and that means that the Chinese are going elsewhere because they can find a better value.
And the American soybean farmers and their families are suffering. They are 500,000 of us that produce soybeans, and we desperately need markets, and we need opportunity and a leveled playing field.
“There’s an artificial barrier that is built with these tariffs that makes us not be competitive," Ragland added.
Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council executive director Stefan Maupin likened the tariffs to "death by a thousand cuts."
“We’re in a significant and desperate situation where... none of the crops that farmers grow right now return a profit,” Maupin told the Tennessee Lookout Monday. “They don’t even break even.”
Alan Meadows, a fifth-generation soybean farmer in Lauderdale County, Tennessee, said that “this has been a really tough year for us."
“It started off really good," Meadows said. "We were in the field in late March, which is early for us. But then the wheels came off, so to speak, pretty quick.”
It started with devastating flooding in April, followed by a drier-than-usual summer. Higher supply costs due to inflation and Trump's tariffs exacerbated the dire situation.
“So much of what has happened and what’s going on here is totally out of our control,” Meadows said. “We just want a free, fair, and open market where we can sell our goods... as competitively as anybody else around the world. And we do feel that we produce a superior product here in the United States, and we just need to have the markets.”
Farmers are desperate for help from the federal government. However, Congress has not passed a new Farm Bill—legislation authorizing funding for agriculture and food programs—since 2018, without which "we do not have a workable safety net program when things like this happen in our economy," according to Maupin.
Maupin added that farmers “have done everything right, they’ve managed their finances well, they have put in a good crop... but they cannot change the weather, they cannot change the economy, they cannot change the markets."
"The weather is in the control of a higher power," he added, "and the economy and the markets are in control of Washington, DC."
It's not just soybean farmers who are hurting. Tim Maxwell, a 65-year-old Iowa grain and hog farmer, told the BBC Sunday that "our yields, crops, and weather are pretty good—but our [interest from] markets right now is on a low."
Despite his troubles, Maxwell remains supportive of Trump, saying that he is "going to be patient," adding, "I believe in our president."
However, there is a limit to Maxwell's patience with Trump.
"We're giving him the chance to follow through with the tariffs, but there had better be results," he said. "I think we need to be seeing something in 18 months or less. We understand risk—and it had better pay off."
It's also not just Trump's economic policies that are putting farmers in a squeeze. The president's anti-immigrant crackdown has left many farmers without the labor they need to operate.
“The whole thing is screwed up,” John Painter, a Pennsylvania organic dairy farmer and three-time Trump voter, told Politico Monday. “We need people to do the jobs Americans are too spoiled to do.”
As Politico noted:
The US agricultural workforce fell by 155,000—about 7%—between March and July, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That tracks with Pew Research Center data that shows total immigrant labor fell by 750,000 from January through July. The labor shortage piles onto an ongoing economic crisis for farmers exacerbated by dwindling export markets that could leave them with crop surpluses.
“People don’t understand that if we don’t get more labor, our cows don’t get milked and our crops don’t get picked,” said Tim Wood, another Pennsylvania dairy farmer and a member of the state's Farm Bureau board of directors.
Charlie Porter, who heads the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau’s Ag Labor and Safety Committee, told Politico that “it’s a shame you have hard-working people who need labor, and a group of people who are willing to work, and they have to look over their shoulder like they’re criminals—they're not."
Painter also said that he is "very disappointed" by Trump's immigration policies.
“It’s not right, what they’re doing,” he said of the administration. “All of us, if we look back in history, including the president, we have somebody that came to this country for the American dream.”
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