• Congressional agriculture leaders are prioritizing roughly $15 billion in new farm aid and disaster assistance as farmers face rising costs and increasing bankruptcies.
  • Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., is pushing to attach aid to a broader supplemental funding bill.
  • Lawmakers are also debating wildfire response, a controversial overhaul of the U.S. Forest Service, and efforts to pass a streamlined farm bill amid partisan disagreements.

Congressional ag leaders are back in Washington and focused on getting about $15 billion in farm aid out the door and helping states reeling from fires and other natural disasters across the country. Lawmakers also are weighing in on President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to overhaul the 101-year-old U.S. Forest Service.

“The big thing is we’re committed to getting additional aid done,” Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said Tuesday to a gathering of North American Agricultural Journalists on Capitol Hill. Boozman stressed the need to add to the $12 billion in recent payments from the Trump administration to help farmers struggling with skyrocketing production costs until ag safety net programs take effect in October. 

“This is the third really difficult year that we've seen in farm country. When you take those three years together, it's the biggest drop in row crop income history,” Boozman said. 

Ensuring American farmers stay in business is critical to the food supply, national security and the broader economy. Boozman noted that the number of producers growing fruits, vegetables and other specialty crops has plummeted in the last 20 years, and now there’s a danger the same trend will happen to farmers of corn and soybeans, the two biggest U.S. crops. 

The Arkansas Republican said he expects a supplemental funding bill to move “fairly quickly” because of the need to replenish the military given the ongoing war in Iran, making it likely the best path to attach additional farm aid. 

Still, Boozman nodded to time constraints while discussing his priorities for the remainder of the year. “When you look at the calendar going forward, there's really not that much time left,” he said.

With most of August and October in recess and high-stakes midterm elections coming up in November, the Senate and House only have the equivalent of nine weeks left in which both chambers are in session this year. 

Boozman’s state of Arkansas, the top U.S. rice-growing state, led the country in Chapter 12 farm bankruptcy filings last year with 33, more than double the prior year and the most in the state this century, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Even with the Trump administration’s payments, rice farmers are expected to lose more than $200 an acre, according to AFBF. 

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Even prior to the U.S. war with Iran that has driven up fertilizer and fuel costs, economists were forecasting a fourth straight year of negative returns for corn and soybean growers in 2026. 

Disaster aid, Forest Service concerns, farm bill

Boozman also said he’s focused on disaster assistance for states reeling from the impact of wildfires, winter storms, drought and more. “The list goes on and on.” 

He didn’t specify the potential dollar amount of such assistance. 

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate Ag Committee, told ag journalists that concern about fires in the Western U.S. is “very real right now” with wildfires already starting. 

The comments come as the Trump administration’s plan to overhaul the Forest Service is prompting debate on if it’s a political dismantling or needed change. 

Klobuchar, who is running for governor in her home state of Minnesota, decried Trump’s plan to restructure the USDA agency created a century ago by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. 

As far as working on a bipartisan effort to deal with the fire concerns, Klobuchar said she’s “willing to work with anyone on anything.” But Republicans must decide if they want such sweeping changes to the Forest Service to happen “in the middle of this very, very scary fire season.” 

As the Trump administration plans to move the Forest Service’s headquarters to Salt Lake City, Boozman said he believes it’s important to keep the agency housed within USDA and not moved to the Interior Department. The former is “pretty non-controversial” while the policy mood within Interior tends to be influenced by whichever party is occupying the White House, he said. 

Boozman also stressed that he aims to complete a farm bill markup in “weeks rather than months,” with a goal of just slightly modifying the House-passed legislation and getting it fully passed. A key to doing so, he said, is ensuring it’s not weighed down with controversial provisions that could cause a logjam. 

Still, Boozman reiterated that he’s a firm “no” on Klobuchar’s push regarding a requirement in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for states to begin paying a share of the costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program based on their SNAP error rates. Klobuchar seeks to delay the cost sharing while Boozman said the system needs to be fixed.

Also speaking to ag journalists on Tuesday was Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio, the vice ranking Democrat of the House Agriculture Committee. 

Brown, when asked if she might prefer holding off on passing a farm bill until next year, when Democrats might be back in control of the House, said she thinks there are challenges, but she sought to join the committee “to get things done.” 

“I absolutely would love to be able to pass a farm bill,” she said, adding that House Ag Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., is highly upbeat about full congressional passage this year. “I appreciate his optimism, and I think his intentions have been good,” she said.