The US Senate Agriculture Committee has advanced the Agricultural Act of 2026, the long-delayed farm bill, on a party-line vote of 12 to 11. The committee had failed to move the legislation last month; this time Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, back in the Senate for the first time in three months, was present to vote in favour.

Most farm organisations welcomed the vote and pressed the full Senate to act. Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said it had been almost a decade since Congress last passed a farm bill and that more than 200,000 family farms had gone out of business in those ten years. More than 100 farmers and ranchers were in Washington this week lobbying for a bipartisan bill, he said.

Ethanol was a central theme. The bill would write permanent, nationwide year-round sales of E15 fuel into federal law, which the National Corn Growers Association, Growth Energy, the Renewable Fuels Association, the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association and National Sorghum Producers all singled out. Jed Bower, NCGA president, called the 2026 corn crop "the most expensive crop we've ever planted, raised, and are now harvesting" and said growers needed the bill and E15 to become law this year.

The soybean, wheat, dairy, sorghum, fresh produce, fertiliser and farm credit lobbies also backed the bill, with the National Association of Wheat Growers warning that committee action "must not be the end of the road" after four years of debate on the next five-year bill. The National Farmers Union welcomed mandatory country-of-origin labelling for beef as "a major win" while saying the bill would not stop the crisis of rising input costs and a safety net that no longer fits modern farming.

Not everyone was pleased. The Meat Institute said it would keep opposing the mandatory country-of-origin labelling (MCOOL) provisions, citing an analysis that they would raise beef costs for consumers by $835 million a year and noting that Canada and Mexico had won the right to retaliate with more than $1 billion in tariffs when the rule was last in force.

The National Young Farmers Coalition said it was disappointed that the committee had again advanced a bill without addressing land access for young and beginning farmers or restoring nutrition funding, and the National Family Farm Coalition said farm bankruptcies had hit a six-year high in April while lawmakers rehashed the same policies.

The House has already passed its own farm bill, so the next steps are a floor vote in the Senate and then reconciling the two versions before anything reaches the president's desk. Reporting by Mariah Squire.

Source: Successful Farming