Following the release of Chairman John Boozman’s revised proposal for the Agricultural Act of 2026, the National Young Farmers Coalition is pushing back, urging lawmakers to reinstate investments in land access and federal nutrition programs before the Senate Agriculture Committee marks up the bill.
While committee leadership framed the updated draft as an incremental step toward a bipartisan agreement, young farming advocates contend that technical adjustments do not go far enough to address the challenges facing new growers.
“We see the committee moving on technical improvements, but technicalities will not save the new generation of farmers from land consolidation or a crumbling nutrition safety net,” Michelle A.T. Hughes, executive director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, said in a press release. “This revised text continues to ignore the urgent need for structural investments in land access and fails to restore the essential nutrition programs that keep our local farm economies viable. As written, this bill remains a missed opportunity.”
The Capitol Hill Push for Land and Credit Access
In a conversation with The Packer regarding the coalition’s legislative push, Vanessa García Polanco, government relations director for the National Young Farmers Coalition, highlighted active efforts on Capitol Hill to amend the draft before final markup.
“We are really excited to see Senator [Tina] Smith from Minnesota actually just introduce our new producer economic security amendment that basically will create a program on increasing land access, marketing and capital for beginning farmers,” García Polanco said. “We’re also seeing several additional tools created, suggested as amendments related more to credit access and land reporting, which we believe are important mechanisms too.”
According to the coalition, omitting authorization for the Increasing Land Access, Market, and Capital (ILCM) program and the Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL) survey leaves USDA without the critical data and tools needed to support new farmers or facilitate the transition of 300 million acres of farmland over the next two decades.
SNAP as an Economic Lifeline for Farm Revenue
Beyond land security, advocates emphasize that the bill’s failure to reverse $187 billion in SNAP cuts directly impairs small farm balance sheets.
For regional producers, federal food assistance acts as a direct market driver. Lydia Nebel of KC Farm School noted that she continued to see an increased use in SNAP and other food assistance programs offered at Kansas City area farmers markets.
“About half of our SNAP users are regular customers [who] use the farmers market for their grocery shopping so they can feed their families local, seasonal, nutrient-dense food,” Nebel said. “We not only get to help increase access to these high-quality foods ... but also increase economic impact for area farmers. The market is producer-only so we can see the direct benefit on small businesses, regenerative farmers and our community.”
García Polanco reiterated that cuts to federal food assistance strike directly at a farmer’s financial sustainability, limiting their ability to build equity or expand operations.
“We need to understand that SNAP is extremely important for farmers,” García Polanco said. “When you cut SNAP, you are cutting farmers’ incomes, and that reduces their ability to buy land.”
A Changing Demographic Shift in American Farming
Advocates stress that omitting targeted investments for emerging growers threatens to stall systemic equity and economic growth across the agricultural sector. For García Polanco, the policy debate ultimately centers on who will be resourced to lead the country’s farm economy into the future.
“By omission, you are not impacting their journey into agriculture, and that’s more painful and concerning,” García Polanco said regarding the draft’s gaps. “We know that the future of American agriculture is not a white male with 600 acres of Nebraska. It is a lot of young people from urban areas, people of color who want to buy land in rural areas that want to have really robust agricultural enterprises to feed their communities and to sell to markets.”
Until mandatory funding for land access, local food systems, and nutrition assistance is included, the coalition continues to urge a NO vote on the proposed legislation.
