After a Thursday morning markup meeting in Washington D.C., the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry voted 10-11 along party lines to keep the Farm Bill in committee. The decision hinders a Senate floor vote and final passage of the five-year omnibus bill.
The committee became deadlocked over changes to federal food aid provisions in the bill. States with high error rates in their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs, or SNAP, would have to pay into the program starting in 2027. Republicans proposed a one-year delay on the cost-share. Democrats sought a two-year delay and oppose language allowing states with the highest error rates to be exempt from paying into the program.
Republican Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, who chairs the Ag Committee, said the compromise in the Senate version of the Farm Bill was Democrats’ final shot for changes.
“This is not about SNAP recipients. This is about the states with very, very high error rates,” Boozman said. “We’re holding hostage our farm community … We’re charged to help them, and right now, we’re not able to do that because of this.”
Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer sits on the Senate Ag Committee. She called the Democrats “disgraceful” for not compromising to advance the Farm Bill.
“Now, they’re turning their backs on farmers, ranchers, and rural America,” she wrote in a statement on X. “We worked with them to secure bipartisan support for E15 and offered a compromise on SNAP cost share concerns. What did the Democrats do? They voted against every policy they claim to care about: funding food banks, improving rural and mental health services, increasing access to safe drinking water, and expanded broadband connectivity.”
U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts released a statement after the bill failed to advance, saying Democrats failed to support ag producers.
“For months, there has been bipartisan agreement that we need to do more for our farmers and ranchers,” the statement said. “Today, Senate Democrats had an opportunity to support Ag producers by voting to advance the Farm Bill out of the Senate Ag Committee. Instead, they chose to play politics and voted against it in committee. America’s farmers and ranchers feed and fuel the world. Republicans will continue to fight for them while Democrats continue to treat them as political pawns.”
Nebraska Farm Bureau President Mark McHargue said the decision was "disappointing."
"Simply put, food security starts with a strong farm economy, and the failure of the Senate Agriculture Committee to move a new Farm Bill to the Senate floor does nothing but create more uncertainty for our nation's food producers," he said.
McHargue added that the future of year-round E15 sales was now uncertain as well.
Democrat and ranking committee member Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota said she was committed to keep working on the bill.
“Today we also included a package of additional bipartisan amendments that I voted for and have long supported,” Klobuchar wrote on X. “I also appreciate that the Chairman has acknowledged the problem with the SNAP cost shift to states and counties. But amid tariff-related rising grocery prices in states across the country where SNAP has been critical, this is only a one-year fix.”
The House passed its own version of the Farm Bill – The Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026 – on April 30.
Congress has until Sept. 30 to pass a new Farm Bill or extend the current version. Once the Senate votes to approve a Farm Bill, it will go back to the House. If the House approves the same version of the bill, it will then be sent to the president’s desk.
The Ag Committee will be open to further discussions as called by Chairman Boozman.
The Sept. 30 passage deadline is fast approaching. The Senate recess begins next week, cutting into working time to complete a bill.
The cost-share issue
The Senate’s version of the Farm Bill proposed a one-year delay to state cost share of SNAP.
Under the OBBBA, states with a SNAP error rate above 6% would have to pay 5%-20% of program costs starting in October 2027. SNAP has historically been funded by the federal government, excluding some administrative costs.
Democrats were willing to accept the compromise with some changes. Under the OBBBA, states with error rates above 13.33% have their cost-sharing penalties delayed to fiscal year 2029 or 2030.
Klobuchar spoke on an amendment that would address the disparity.
“What we are asking for is simply to not have a situation where one state that has double the error rate of my home state be able to get off scot-free for two years,” Klobuchar said. “There's just no way that any other program is set up that way.”
Democrats also wanted a two-year delay, not just one.
The committee ultimately voted along party lines to leave the current error rate provisions untouched.
Two other tweaks to the SNAP provisions were added to the draft Wednesday night by Boozman, hoping to garner more Democratic support. One allows states to use their FY2025 or FY2026 error rates to determine their cost-share amounts. The other would increase funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program.
A long line of delays
Jordan Dux, senior director of National Affairs at the Nebraska Farm Bureau, said about 80% of typical Farm Bill spending focuses on food and nutrition, including the SNAP.
“The rest of it is divided up into all sorts of things – from commodity support programs that farmers and ranchers utilize, to conservation programs, trade promotion programs, energy, research, Extension,” Dux said. “All those kinds of things make up a Farm Bill, which is normally, in agricultural circles, one of the largest pieces of legislation that we work on.”
A truly revamped Farm Bill hasn’t been completed since 2018. The current Farm Bill has been extended for an extra year three times.
Dux said a new five-year bill will give farmers and ranchers certainty through access to larger loans, updated crop insurance and investments in new and old programs alike.
“Agriculture is a business where certainty is hard to find. From a policy standpoint, we want to try to take some of the guessing out of things,” he said. “Producers want to know that if there is a downturn in the ag economy that those programs that provide financial support will be there.”
He said that the ability to plan five years out for risk and unexpected market changes is especially important for the current state of America’s ag economy.
“Really, every acre of corn and soybeans that go into the ground here in our state is on the negative side right now,” Dux said. "We're not even talking about producers not making a profit. We're talking about below the cost of production."
Investments from the OBBBA did cover some farm issues – like conservation funds and global trade promotion programs – but they will need to be reauthorized or permanently enacted.
In the House version of the Farm Bill, a provision allowing for year-round, cross-country sales of 15% ethanol gasoline – or E15 – was detached and passed as a standalone bill.
The Senate Farm Bill reincorporates the E15 legislation.
The bill is a priority for farm state legislators, and proponents say it would create demand for corn, offer lower gasoline prices to consumers and bolster the American energy market.
The fight for year-round E15 has continued for over a decade, crossing party lines. Some oil-state senators are concerned pieces of the E15 legislation would push burdensome blending requirements on small refineries and cut into existing oil markets.
With a lot of bipartisan effort, Dux is hopeful that a five-year Farm Bill will pass this year.
“That is not to say it's a guarantee by any means,” he said. “Everyone has a stake in this bill. It’s difficult to get large pieces of bipartisan legislation done today. It just is.”