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farm bill
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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The GOP's Sneaky and Destructive Plan to Privatize Anti-Hunger Program
Privatization is often touted as a solution to bureaucratic red tape or cutting “wasteful” government spending, but in practice, it can mean cutting the experienced public workforce who administer complicated government programs.
Nov 28, 2024
The country’s largest and most important government anti-hunger program faces a renewed threat as Congress returns from recess next week: privatization.
Congress needs to reauthorize the now-expired Farm Bill—the enormous legislative package that includes funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps)—but a privatization scheme was attached to the bill.
Congress should not be using much-needed disaster relief as a back door to privatize the SNAP program’s workforce.
Earlier this Congress, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) introduced the “SNAP Staffing Flexibility Act,” which was also adopted as an amendment to the current version of the Farm Bill. The bill would allow state agencies to hire outside contractors to administer key requirements of the SNAP program under certain conditions, such as in the aftermath of natural disasters or during pandemics and public health emergencies. Rep. Bacon and supporters of this proposal now aim to tack this provision onto the emergency disaster relief package under consideration this year. Make no mistake: This is an attempt to use emergency disaster relief as cover to privatize the SNAP program and workforce, instead of giving the SNAP program enough money to operate effectively.
Privatization is often touted as a solution to bureaucratic red tape or cutting “wasteful” government spending, but in practice, it can mean cutting the experienced public workforce who administer complicated government programs. This can result in prolonged delays, more people wrongly denied benefits, and ultimately worse outcomes for people who need the benefits most.
SNAP Is Our Most Important Anti-Hunger Program, But It Is Facing Renewed Privatization Threats
SNAP serves tens of millions of low-paid working families and other households with low incomes (including disabled and older adults). Like unemployment insurance, SNAP is responsive to the business cycle—meaning SNAP is particularly important during economic downturns when poverty and food insecurity rise. Between fiscal years 1980 and 2008, anywhere from 7 to 11% of U.S. households received SNAP. Participation grew dramatically during the Great Recession, peaking at 18.8% in fiscal year 2013 (47.6 million people).
Participation spiked again during the Covid-19 pandemic amid increased poverty and food insecurity. In fiscal year 2022, although total participation was lower than during the Great Recession (12.4% of all U.S. households participated in the program), SNAP saw a record-high participation rate among eligible individuals, equivalent to 41.2 million people receiving benefits in an average month. Expanded SNAP eligibility—alongside other relief measures such as Child Tax Credit expansions, universal free school lunches, and federal stimulus payments—kept food insecurity at bay during the height of the pandemic in 2021. However, as those programs expired—and the shocks of pandemic reopening and the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to food prices growing at an unprecedented rate—food insecurity increased in 2022.
As part of the SNAP quality control process, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) examines each state’s application processing timeliness (APT). The rate is calculated by dividing the number of SNAP applications processed by the number of applications that were expected to be processed during that period, typically 30 days since the application was submitted. In fiscal year 2023, APT rates ranged from a low of 39% in Alaska to a high of 98% in Idaho, with a median rate of 85% across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In 2023, only four states met the FNS benchmark rate of 95%. Failure to meet this benchmark is not a new phenomenon. Based on available data, no more than a third of all states have ever met the 95% timeliness standard in any given year.
Proponents of SNAP privatization often point to slow application processing rates as evidence that the existing program is inefficient and in need of “reform.” However, this argument ignores important context on these rates and its connection to declining federal funding for SNAP and shrinking public-sector employment.
Chronic Underfunding of SNAP Strains Workers and Delays Processing of Essential Benefits
SNAP is a federal-state partnership, so the federal government pays the full cost of nutrition benefits and splits the costs of administration with states, but federal spending on SNAP administration has declined over time. Meanwhile, SNAP administrators’ caseloads have grown dramatically. Many states point to administrative problems—including low staffing, hiring freezes, and high turnover—as one of the biggest barriers to improving slow processing times and backlogs.
To be clear, low APT rates are a cause for concern because they indicate that many eligible households in need of food assistance are not quickly receiving those benefits. But the solution to ensuring applicants receive their benefits quickly is simple: Policymakers must increase funding for SNAP and restore sufficient staffing levels so that case workers can process applications effectively and efficiently.
Starving SNAP of Funding Serves the Long-Term, Right-Wing Privatization Agenda
The push to privatize SNAP eligibility determinations is decades-old and has produced serious problems in states that have contracted out these services or automated certain functions of the process. When Texas outsourced its SNAP eligibility determinations to a for-profit company in 2006, thousands of people were unable to apply or were given incorrect information and many were wrongly denied benefits. Public-sector staff were then forced to fix mistakes, and eligible SNAP participants were subject to long delays to receive benefits.
Efforts to defraud the SNAP program, including misuse of benefits or selling them for cash, is very rare. However, attention to purported fraud has increased in recent years, and SNAP workers have been forced to take on additional anti-fraud measures, further delaying processing and potentially contributing to low APT rates.
The SNAP Program Needs Support, Not a License to Cut More Corners
Congress should not be using much-needed disaster relief as a back door to privatize the SNAP program’s workforce. There are other real and urgent problems with the SNAP program this year—for instance, families have had their SNAP benefits stolen by card “skimmers” when they swipe their cards at grocery store cash registers. In 2022, Congress passed a provision that would allow states to pay back the stolen benefits to victims of theft, but that has since expired.
Farm Bill reauthorization should focus on preserving nutrition assistance benefits without cuts and on reducing administrative burdens and red tape for SNAP recipients, applicants, and staff—all of which could help reduce backlogs and improve how quickly people can receive their benefits. And disaster relief spending should focus on providing aid to vulnerable communities trying to rebuild after storms—not opportunistically trying to cut corners and privatize vital services.
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