By Clint Thompson
The House Ag Committee did its part in the farm bill process with its passage of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 on March 5, 2026.
House Republicans are eyeing a floor vote for the farm bill legislation during the last week in April, according to Politico.
John Walt Boatright, director of government affairs with American Farm Bureau Federation, talked the farm bill process during last Thursday’s University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Florida Agricultural Policy Outlook Conference.
“Something really exciting that I think a lot of the specialty crop industry is excited to see is this new Specialty Crop Assistance Framework, which seeks to stabilize how they address specialty crop assistance,” Boatright said.
“Whether it’s disaster relief or economic relief, for years and even approaching the decade that I’ve been working these issues, we have seen everybody try to reinvent the wheel every time there’s a new disaster and a new challenge. It simply shouldn’t be that way because that eats into time and efficiency and costs, for the new administration to work with various states to try to come up with a brand new program that takes staff time; it takes resources when we’ve been through a lot of these situations before.
“We should be able to come up and agree to some sort of structural framework, and that’s exactly what this farm bill proposes to do. We’re really excited about that.”
Other Impacts
Other notable impacts for Florida include enhancements to the Specialty Crop Research Initiative; funding for dedicated mechanization and automation; continued citrus disease funding; and crop insurance.
The farm bill is a piece of legislation that is scheduled to be renewed every five years. President Trump signed the Farm Bill into law on Dec. 20, 2018. But it expired at the end of September 2023.