The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (H.R. 7567)—which would reauthorize agriculture and nutrition programs through 2031—was passed by the House Agriculture Committee on March 4, 2026. Leadership aims to bring it to a full House vote before Easter (April 5).
If the bill passes the House, it will move to the Senate. The Senate may take it up as written or develop its own version. Either way, both chambers must ultimately agree on a single bill before it can be sent to the President.
What’s in it for urban agriculture
Some key provisions are included:
- Reauthorization of the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (OUAIP)
- Reauthorization of the Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production Advisory Committee
- Permanent authorization of urban county committees, which have until now operated as pilots
These are small but important steps toward stabilizing urban agriculture’s place in the US Department of Agriculture.
The bill also incorporates the Local Farmers Feeding Our Communities Act, which would revive and extend two popular pandemic-era programs that were recently ended. These programs direct federal funding to states and tribes to purchase locally produced food for distribution to people facing food insecurity.
While not strictly an urban agriculture program, this approach matters. It begins to shift procurement away from highly centralized, industrial supply chains and toward more regional and local systems—the kind of infrastructure urban agriculture would need to operate at meaningful scale.
What happens next
Passing a farm bill is rarely straightforward, and this year is no exception:
- Major disagreements—for example, around SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/aka Food Stamps)—remain unresolved
- Midterm elections are approaching, which will increasingly pull lawmakers’ attention toward campaigning
Because of this, Congress could end up passing yet another extension of the 2018 Farm Bill and revisiting the issue next year with a new Congress.
There is also a broader question emerging: whether the kind of omnibus farm bill that has held together the food-and-farm coalition since 1973 is still viable at all.
City Farm Policy 