Every five years, Congress is supposed to pass the federal farm bill, one of the most important pieces of legislation shaping the American food and agriculture system. While many people think it is simply farming policy, the comprehensive omnibus legislation reaches far beyond, into influencing how food is produced, how land is managed, how rural economies are supported, and how federal resources are distributed across conservation, nutrition, research, and rural development programs.
Among its many components, conservation policy has become one of the most important pillars of the farm bill since its inception. Farmers and ranchers are not only producers of food and fiber, but are also stewards of the nation’s soil, water, land, and natural resources. Conservation programs have become central tools for supporting both environmental management and farm viability—especially as unpredictable and extreme weather patterns intensify, land degradation increases, and rural communities face mounting economic challenges.
Yet farm conservation policy did not emerge overnight. It was shaped through decades of economic crises, environmental disasters, and political compromise. It is essential to understand where conservation policy came from, and its farm bill evolution, to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of the current iteration that recently passed out of the House Agriculture Committee and now sits before Congress.
A brief history of conservation policy
In 1933, during the height of the Great Depression when the unemployment rate was at 25 percent, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed, and Congress passed, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which would pay farmers subsidies to not overplant. Subsequently, in 1935, Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act to mitigate the environmental degradation that led to the environmental crisis known as the Dust Bowl.
However, the Supreme Court found a new tax on processors that would pay for the subsidies in the AAA to be unconstitutional. In response, Congress passed a new law, the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, that combined agricultural production management with soil conservation by providing direct payments to farmers who would reduce their planting of crops that were depleting the soil of its vital nutrients.
Throughout the next 20 years, conservation priorities were sidelined, first to increase production to meet the needs of World War II. Then, even though conservation programs were created as a part of the Agricultural Act of 1956, the USDA once again emphasized increased production to meet alleged demand. Such expanded production led to the 1980s farm crisis but brought a renewed spotlight on conservation policies.
Subsequently, the 1985 farm bill not only included new programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program but also established conservation compliance standards under new provisions known as Swampbuster and Sodsaver that addressed draining wetlands and the plowing of native sod, respectively. This farm bill was the first to include a dedicated section specifically for conservation purposes. The most notable programs today are the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which help incentivize farmers to adopt conservation practices by underwriting some of their up-front costs, but both are oversubscribed and underfunded.
Despite decades of conservation policy, many of the same challenges persist: Soil erosion continues to degrade farmland and contribute to dangerous dust storms at nearly twice the intensity of the peak Dust Bowl era, agricultural runoff fuels the Gulf of Mexico’s annual dead zone, and excess fertilizer contaminates drinking water and contributes to the climate crisis.
What’s in the proposed farm bill?
In February, the House Agriculture Committee passed the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (FFNSA) with a 34-17 vote. The proposed legislation does provide needed updates and policy changes, but sadly, it fails to make the changes needed to address the crisis farmers—and the food supply chain—have felt over the past eight years since the last farm bill was passed in 2018.
The Good: The FFNSA provides many environmentally beneficial provisions that would expand and prioritize nutrient management and soil health in agricultural research, and it includes practices related to soil health, heat-trapping emissions, and carbon sequestration. Specifically, the FFNSA would also allow states to select 10 priority practices that would be reimbursed up to 90%, but only if each practice “increases carbon sequestration or reduces greenhouse gas emissions, including emissions of methane and nitrous oxide.”
The Bad: Precision agriculture—the use of technology such as GPS, sensors, and drones to tailor how fertilizers and other inputs are applied on farms—can be effective at addressing conservation through innovation that makes farms more efficient. The FFNSA allows increased payments for up to 90% of the costs of adopting precision agriculture practices and acquiring the technology. At face value, this addition has positive environmental benefits such as increased profits and reduced application of crop inputs like fertilizer, herbicide, fuel, and water. However, it presents various barriers to conservation programs.
While large farms benefit from economies of scale, with savings on fuel, labor, and inputs, small farms can experience higher per-acre costs for precision technology. Innovations in seeds and precision agriculture have improved efficiency and yields, but they have also contributed to rising production costs and structural pressures that can favor larger-scale operations over smaller and midsize farms.
The costs of precision agriculture would likely increase demand for EQIP and CSP. These programs have thousands of farmers willing to adopt conservation practices but are turned away each year due to insufficient funding. If Congress decides to keep precision agriculture in the farm bill, it needs to ensure there is targeted support for small-scale, socially disadvantaged, and limited-resource farmers. Mandatory funding must be increased to provide these farmers with reliable profitability, and the funding must not be at the discretion of appropriators.
The Ugly: The FFNSA claims that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the federal government should have the sole authority to create uniformity in EPA-approved pesticides labeling using their rigorous, science-based review process. However, this would take away state governments’ authority to regulate additional pesticides that the federal government has not yet regulated or is not willing to regulate, even if the pesticides contain carcinogens.
The implications of this provision extend far beyond labeling. For decades, states have often stepped in when federal regulation lagged behind emerging science or public health concerns. Preempting state authority could limit the ability of states to respond to new research on pesticide exposure, environmental contamination, and farmworker safety.
Envisioning a better farm bill
Beyond the good, bad, and ugly, the broader concern with this farm bill iteration is that it largely preserves the status quo. Farmers across the country have experienced a multitude of disruptions since the last farm bill was passed, including supply chain breakdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, increased input costs, extreme weather and natural disasters, consolidation in private land ownership, and increased food prices and hunger resulting from geopolitical conflicts. Yet the FFNSA does little to fundamentally restructure the policy framework that shapes how federal resources reach farmers and communities.
At a moment when many producers—especially beginning farmers, small and midsize limited-resource producers, and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers—are struggling to remain viable, the farm bill should be an opportunity to rethink how federal programs support regeneration and resilience. Though the proposed legislation includes marker bills that would strengthen local and regional food systems and continues authorization of many programs, the funding streams for these programs are not mandatory, putting their authorizations at the whim of the appropriations committee. It also completely fails to include any support for, or even the recognition of, food and farm workers.
The next farm bill must recognize that conservation and economic viability are not competing goals but are mutually beneficial. Healthy soils improve productivity, reduce input costs, increase water retention, and help farmers withstand droughts and floods. Policies that support regenerative practices, diversified cropping systems, and conservation for small-scale farming can simultaneously improve farms’ economic viability and environmental outcomes.
Ultimately, the farm bill is more than a piece of agricultural legislation. It is the single largest food and agriculture policy framework in the United States, shaping everything from what farmers grow to what families eat and how land is managed for future generations. A truly forward-looking farm bill would invest in farmers as stewards of the land, strengthen rural economies, expand opportunity for the next generation of producers, and ensure that conservation remains at the heart of US agriculture.
As Congress debates the FFNSA, the challenge is clear: to move beyond incremental changes and build a transformational farm bill that reflects the realities farmers face today and are likely to face in the future, creating true food and farm security.