House Resolution 1 — also called the reconciliation bill or the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — passed the House on July 3 and was signed the next day by President Donald Trump. The passage was widely praised by agricultural groups as a boon for agriculture and rural America.
“Farm Bureau applauds the House and Senate for passing legislation that will bring certainty to America’s farmers and ranchers,” Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a news release. “Modernizing important farm safety net programs and making permanent critical tax provisions could be the difference between staying in business or shutting down the family farm.”
The Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance (SCFBA) expressed gratitude to the House and Senate Agriculture Committees and their chairmen for including investments in specialty crops in the bill.
“Any Congressional investment in American agriculture must include specialty crops,” the alliance said in a news release. “America’s specialty crop growers face a host of unprecedented challenges similar to those confronting row crop producers. Specialty crops represent nearly a quarter of U.S. crop value and make up more than half of what Americans eat. The family farms that provide Americans with a reliable source of fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and horticulture, deserve meaningful support from their government.”
Agricultural Tax Cuts Among Steep Funding Slashes
The bill includes extensive tax cuts and funding changes across wide swaths of the federal government. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins described the bill as making the “largest tax cuts in history” permanent.
“It provides immediate tax relief to farmers, ranchers, and rural Americans by increasing the small business expensing threshold and permanently extending the Small Business Deduction,” she said in the USDA’s official announcement on the bill’s signing. She added that the bill “bolsters the farm safety net, makes crop insurance more affordable, and protects two million family farms from the death tax.”
These changes mean many direct benefits to farmers and growers and $66 billion in new spending for farm programs.
But the bill also slashes funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the country’s largest federal nutrition program that serves 42 million people who need help putting food on the table. According to a recent report from the Hass Avocado Board, shoppers using SNAP often buy more and more varied produce than non-SNAP shoppers.
The bill also makes dramatic funding cuts to Medicaid, a program the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) called “a vital source of health insurance coverage for Americans living in rural areas.” In a report issued two weeks before the bill was signed into law, NRHA estimated that roughly 1.5 million rural Americans would lose health coverage if the bill passed, and potentially hundreds of already stressed rural hospitals would close.
What’s in It for Fresh Produce?
Earlier projections of funding increases to programs benefiting specialty crops became a reality in the signing of the bill. These include:
- Funding of the Specialty Crop Research Initiative will increase to $175 million a year in 2026.
- Funding for the Plant Pest and Disease Management and Disaster Prevention program will increase to $90 million a year in 2026.
- Funding for the Specialty Crop Block Grants will increase to $100 million a year in 2026.
This latter element is especially important to the widely varied nature of the fresh produce industry.
“The programs that take place in North Dakota or Idaho will look different than the programs that take place in Florida, but they’re all dedicated to enhancing the specialty crop industry,” says National Potato Council CEO Kam Quarles on the impact of the block grants.
What’s Needed Next?
Though the SCFBA called HR 1’s investments in specialty crop growers a key piece of the puzzle to enhance their competitiveness, the group said there is still work to be done.
“Senate rules prohibited the inclusion of many of the innovative policy initiatives that we proposed, such as investing in mechanization and automation, modernizing procurement rules to include more high-value fruits and vegetables, and reforming crop insurance that would provide many of our growers with an affordable and effective safety net for the first time,” the alliance outlined. SCFBA added that the group looks forward to advancing those and other priorities with Congress in the context of a farm bill.
Unfortunately, the next farm bill might be a while coming yet. Most agricultural economists think the country won’t see a new farm bill until 2026, with a sizable minority thinking it will take until 2027.
Regardless, there are some indications of what the next farm bill might include. In 2024, the House Agriculture Committee put out resources on a potential farm bill that could indicate the group’s priorities.
In a section focused on specialty crops, it allocated $1 billion to specialty crops needs. Many of the funding level changes outlined in the section have been realized in HR 1. However, it also proposed creating several new programs, including the following:
- A new Specialty Crop Mechanization and Automation Research and Extension Program, funded at $20 million annually from the Specialty Crop Research Initiative funding.
- Reauthorize the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program.
- An advisory committee to counsel the Risk Management Agency on crop insurance policy issues of concern to specialty crop growers.
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