29
Jun
Action Calls on U.S. Senate to Oppose Republican Farm Bill Unveiled Last Week
(Beyond Pesticides, June 29, 2026) With the release of the Republican Farm Bill in the U.S. Senate on June 23 and passage of a bill with nearly identical provisions in the U.S. House of Representatives on April 30, Beyond Pesticides and allies are calling on U.S. Senators to reject the GOP Farm Bill as drafted, citing an undermining of public and environmental health.
In addition to severe criticism of the bill language, the Chair of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, Senator John Boozman (R-AR), is being criticized by farm, farmworker, health, and food security groups for characterizing the House bill as “bipartisan” and a “significant achievement” because both the House and Senate bills were drafted without input from Democrats.
U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), a Senate Agriculture Committee member, said: “The draft Farm Bill released today by Senate Republicans fails to meet this moment of crisis that American farmers and families are facing. . . [I]nstead, it goes backward, by undermining USDA support for regenerative agriculture and creating loopholes for pesticides to avoid safety oversight. I will not vote for a Farm Bill that leaves small farmers without a functioning safety net, does not make healthy, clean food more affordable, and does not reverse a meaningful amount of harm caused by H.R. 1 [known as “One, Big, Beautiful Act,” enacted July 4, 2025 as Public Law 119-21], including by delaying the shift of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] costs to state budgets.”
The Senate GOP Farm Bill, the Agricultural Act of 2026, which had not been officially filed before the Senate’s Independence Day recess, redefines underlying standards and practices, resulting in increased dependency on petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture. Rather than responding to health, biodiversity, and climate crises, as well as the high cost of synthetic fertilizers, by investing in organic agriculture and supporting farmers’ transition to nontoxic practices, the bill raises a wide range of social and conservation concerns, including issues affecting family farms, food security, and environmental and public health. It threatens the integrity of organic food by reducing oversight of organic production by loosening inspection and certification requirements.
The text is largely the same as the Farm Bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in April—the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026 (H.R. 7567). The House vote made history when 73 Republicans joined the majority of the Democratic caucus to strip out a pesticide manufacturers’ liability shield (Sections 10205), federal preemption of state and local pesticide laws (Section 10206), and the weakening of bedrock environmental laws and their ability to regulate pesticides (Section 10207). [In its opinion in Monsanto v. Durnell on June 25, the Supreme Court agreed with Bayer/Monsanto’s argument that chemical manufacturers have no responsibility under pesticide law to provide a warning of chronic health effects like cancer on their product labels.]
The draft Senate Republican Farm Bill ignores the current hunger and food insecurity crisis (with a historically large $186 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/SNAP), dismisses the notion of a fair, responsible, and accessible family farm safety net, and rolls back successful conservation investments. The Agriculture Committee markup (debate and vote) of the Senate Farm Bill is expected before the Senate’s August recess.
Poison Pill Provisions in Senate GOP Bill
Subtitle B of Title X, entitled Regulatory Reform, contains the following provisions that weaken the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), undermine environmental protections, and threaten the health of farmers, farmworkers, and consumers.
- Section 10201 [Section 10201 in House bill]: Exemption of safety review. Permanently exempts dozens of hazardous chemicals used in industrial agriculture from human health and environmental safety reviews that are currently required under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). In addition, by expanding the incorporation of biological material in plants as pesticides, with Plant Incorporated Protectants (PIPs), target and nontarget organism resistance builds, undermining the value of organic-compatible materials in organic agriculture.
- Section 10203 [Section 10203 in House bill]: Weakens protection of endangered species. Undermines the integrity of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in an unprecedented manner by delaying protections for threatened and endangered species against dangerous pesticides by giving an internal interagency workgroup a de facto veto on any efforts to protect endangered species from pesticides. The provision will certainly delay and weaken critical conservation measures despite the “no take” prohibition under the ESA for threatened and endangered species.
- Section 10207 [Section 10204 in House bill]: Pushes back deadline for pesticide reviews and years of missing critical safety reviews. Delays the review of hundreds of pesticides for harms to human health, endangered wildlife, and endocrine disruption until 2031, leaving potentially dangerous pesticides on the market and in widespread use without any updated protective measures.
- Section 10209 (Section 10202 in House bill]: Diminishes and delays regulatory authority under pesticide law. Weakens and delays efforts to protect children, farmworkers, and public health, from dangerous pesticides by giving unprecedented authority to the USDA’s Office of Pest Management Policy and pesticide manufacturers to review and potentially veto any environmental or human health safeguards determined to be necessary by EPA. Undermines health-based standard for the setting of allowable pesticide residues (tolerances) in food by considering the availability of alternative chemicals.
- Section 10210 [Section 10211 in House bill]. Threatens collection of information on farming practices. Discontinues statutory funding of the previous Farm Bill for surveys that provide baseline information to communities and farmers to inform practices and outcomes—particularly problematic during a period of severe budget cuts and agency dismantling.
Additional poison pill sections that remain in the Senate draft version, include:
- Focus on Precision Agriculture as the Alternative Food System Approach. The Senate Farm Bill—throughout the Conservation Title (Title II), including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program subtitle (Subtitle B), the Credit Title (Title V), in the Rural Development Title (Title VI), in the Research Title (Title VII), and the Miscellaneous Title (Title XII) —will codify continued reliance on petrochemical fertilizers through the promotion of “precision agriculture.” With the use of drones, satellites, and artificial intelligence, precision agriculture is touted by the industry and USDA as a great environmental achievement, focused on lower or variable application rates of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers—but ignores the dramatic damage it causes to soil biology, complex biological communities, and the economic value of healthy ecosystems and ecosystem services that naturally cycle plant nutrients.
- Closing of USDA Beltsville National Bee Laboratory and Related Research. This Farm Bill does not address the USDA reorganization plan, including the devastating implications of shutting down research facilities at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in Beltsville, Maryland, including the Bee Research Laboratory (aka Bee Lab). Maryland’s Congressional delegation has pointed out that the closing of BARC is also illegal. By moving forward with the decommissioning of BARC, USDA is violating several provisions laid out in the Fiscal Year 2026 Agriculture Appropriations Act, enacted into law on November 12, 2025, including a clear directive to USDA to keep BARC open.
- SNAP Cuts Remain in this Bill. The Senate GOP Farm Bill would continue to codify the initial statutory changes from last summer’s reconciliation bill H.R.1, including shifting the costs to state governments while minimizing cost-share from the federal government from 50 percent to 25 percent, expanding work requirements to 64 years of age from 54 years of age, prohibiting non-citizens from accessing the program, among other deleterious impacts that could be address in this legislation.
Poison Pill Provisions to Monitor
While the most toxic sections of Subtitle C, Part 1, of Title X, were stripped from the House-passed version of the bill, it is important to note that there may be attempts to include the following type of language from original House Agriculture Committee bill into the Senate version through the conference committee process:
- Section 10205: Immunizes pesticide companies from their duty to warn the public about dangerous chemicals in their pesticide formulations, potentially eliminating access to the federal courts for thousands of individuals with cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and other health issues scientifically linked to pesticide exposure. See Stop Chemical Company Secrecy of Pesticide Product Hazards.
- Section 10206: Eliminates the six-decade-old authority of state and local governments to implement additional local and state focused restrictions on the use of dangerous pesticides to protect children, farmworkers, pollinators, public health, and the environment.
- Section 10207: Erases important, long-standing safeguards to protect people and wildlife from pesticide pollution discharged directly into waterways through the Clean Water Act‘s Pesticide General Permit (“PGP”) and includes broad language that would exempt pesticide approvals from the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, and other bedrock environmental laws.
The Save Our Bacon Act (Section 12006 in the House), which is a continuation of the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act (EATS) from the previous Congress was not included in the Senate draft, however this does not stop industry interest to see the language introduced as an amendment. This language would undermine local and state food safety and animal welfare laws currently on the books. In a follow-up to their analysis of EATS in 2023, Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Program published a report earlier this year outlining their analysis of Section 12006 in H.R. 7567. Critics of this language are concerned on a number of fronts, including but not limited to:
- Use of undefined terms that will “require judicial interpretation to determine their exact meaning and application, creating lengthy uncertainty for producers and regulators.”
- Broad implications beyond “covered livestock,” which could implicate sectors ranging from “animal feed, animal vaccines, livestock reproductive materials, and other livestock input industries.”
- Preempts +700 state food laws, undermining the authority of local governments to respond to crises and support their own constituents.
Tell your U.S. Senators to reject the GOP Farm Bill.
Letter to U.S. Senators:
Rather than responding to health, biodiversity, and climate crises, as well as the high cost of synthetic fertilizers, by investing in organic agriculture and supporting farmers’ transition to nontoxic practices, the GOP Farm Bill released by the Senate Agriculture Committee raises a wide range of social and conservation concerns, including the protection of family farms, food
security, and environmental and public health—including these provisions:
*Section 10201 permanently excludes dozens of hazardous chemicals used in industrial agriculture, including some genetically engineered “plant incorporated protectants” (pesticide incorporated plants), from human health and environmental safety reviews currently required under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
*Section 10203 undermines the integrity of the Endangered Species Act in an unprecedented manner by delaying protections for endangered species against dangerous pesticides by allowing an internal interagency workgroup to veto any efforts to protect endangered species from pesticides and delay and weaken critical conservation measures.
*Section 10207 delays the review of hundreds of pesticides for harms to human health, endangered wildlife, and endocrine disruption until 2031, leaving potentially dangerous pesticides in widespread use without any updated protective measures.
*Section 10209 weakens and delays efforts to protect children, farmworkers, and public health, from dangerous pesticides by giving unprecedented authority to the USDA’s Office of Pest Management Policy to review and potentially veto any environmental or human health safeguards determined to be necessary by EPA.
*Section 10210. Discontinues statutory funding of the previous Farm Bill for surveys that provide baseline information to communities and farmers to inform practices and outcomes—particularly problematic during a period of severe budget cuts and agency dismantling.
In addition,
*Focus on Precision Agriculture as the Alternative Food System Approach: The Senate Farm Bill will codify continued reliance on petrochemical fertilizers through the promotion of “precision agriculture,” which ignores the dramatic damage it causes to soil biology, complex biological communities, and the economic value of healthy ecosystems and ecosystem services that naturally cycle plant nutrients.
*Closing of USDA Beltsville National Bee Laboratory and Related Research is not addressed, including the devastating implications of shutting down research facilities at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in Beltsville, Maryland, which violates the Fiscal Year 2026 Agriculture Appropriations Act, which includes a directive to keep BARC open.
*SNAP Cuts are not eliminated, causing deleterious impacts that could be addressed in this legislation.
While the most toxic sections of the House-passed bill were removed, please stop attempts to include the following type of language from the original House Agriculture Committee bill into the Senate version through the conference committee process.
*Section 10205 immunizes pesticide companies from their duty to warn the public about dangerous chemicals in their pesticide formulations.
*Section 10206 eliminates the authority of state and local governments to implement additional local and state-focused restrictions on the use of dangerous pesticides.
*Section 10207 exempts pesticides from provisions of the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, and other bedrock environmental laws.
Please oppose the GOP Farm Bill and invest in organic agriculture and farmers’ transition to nontoxic practices.
Thank you.
