The U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry has published the Agricultural Act of 2026, a measure the panel is branding as "Farm Bill 2.0," according to materials posted on the committee's official .gov site.

The release of the legislative text marks the next formal step in a farm bill cycle that has already stretched beyond the statutory timeline. Committee Chairman John Boozman of Arkansas and Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota lead the panel responsible for the measure, which sets the authority for commodity programs, crop insurance, conservation spending, nutrition assistance and agricultural research.

The committee's publication of the bill text gives growers, cooperatives and input suppliers the first full look at the statutory language that will govern farm support programs, though the posted materials do not yet include a committee report with scorekeeping from the Congressional Budget Office.

For row-crop producers, the central questions in any farm bill reauthorization are the reference prices that trigger Price Loss Coverage payments, the Agriculture Risk Coverage county yields used for revenue guarantees, and the federal crop insurance subsidy levels that shape per-acre input decisions. The committee has not yet released a section-by-section summary detailing where the Agricultural Act of 2026 lands on those levers.

The timing matters for farm margins. Commodity groups including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Corn Growers Association, the American Soybean Association and the National Association of Wheat Growers have pressed lawmakers for higher reference prices and stronger risk-management tools, citing production costs that remain above pre-2022 levels and commodity prices that have retreated from their recent peaks.

The "Farm Bill 2.0" label signals the committee's intent to present the measure as a full five-year reauthorization rather than another short-term extension. The previous farm bill, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, expired and has been carried forward by temporary extensions while House and Senate negotiators worked through disagreements over commodity support levels and nutrition title spending.

The Senate committee's jurisdiction covers the titles that determine baseline spending across the farm economy: commodities and title I programs, conservation programs including the Conservation Reserve Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program, crop insurance under Title XI, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which accounts for the largest share of farm bill outlays.

Procedurally, the bill now moves toward committee markup, where senators can offer amendments before any floor action. A full chamber vote and eventual conference with the House Agriculture Committee, which has advanced its own reauthorization framework, remain ahead.

The committee has posted the bill text on its .gov site, and stakeholders tracking reference prices, conservation enrollment and insurance subsidy rates will find the statutory language there as the markup calendar takes shape.