Hardwood Federation News – March 2026
Farm Bill Clean Up Effort Advances in the House
In early March, the House Agriculture Committee marked up and reported the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026. The Committee vote was 34-17, with 7 Democrats joining all Republicans on the committee to pass the legislation.
As you know, the Farm Bill is home to several programs that are critically important to the entire forest products value chain, including the hardwood sector. This Farm Bill reauthorization cycle has been extraordinary in that the two main drivers of a Farm Bill rewrite—Title 1 which addresses row crop and dairy subsidies and Title 4 which houses the nutrition programs—were cleaved off and passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that was signed by the President July 4 last year. One positive of this action is that last year’s statute also includes language reauthorizing and doubling funding for the Hardwood Federation-supported export promotion programs, namely the Foreign Market Development and Market Access Programs. This was a huge win for our sector. The OBBBA established a new Agriculture Trade Promotion and Facilitation Program that houses both MAP and FMD and importantly, makes these two programs permanent.
So that was the good news. The bad news is that there are number of other Hardwood Federation-supported programs authorized by the Farm Bill that were left in limbo. Among those programs left out of the OBBBA, also known as H.R. 1, are the Wood Innovation Grant and Community Wood Grant programs, as well as all of the biomass energy incentive programs in the Farm Bill’s Energy Title.
The House Agriculture Committee-approved bill would do the following—
- Renews and updates both the Wood Innovation and Community Wood Grant programs. Both of these initiatives have pumped meaningful dollars into the rural economy to stand up innovative wood manufacturing facilities, upgrades at existing sawmills and deployment of biomass combined heat and power projects, among other things.
Alters the Rural Innovation Stronger Economy (RISE), a workforce development grant program, to include the forestry and forest products manufacturing sectors. This approach effectively bolts the Jobs in the Woods Act language onto an existing, nearly identical worker pathway program
- Codifies the concept of biomass carbon neutrality and binds the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assign a greenhouse gas emissions factor of no more than zero to emissions from forest-based biomass energy. While the language does not cover the most critical agency—EPA—the Hardwood Federation will be working with our allies to expand this language to cover all of the federal government footprint as the bill proceeds.
- Reauthorizes and improves the Forest Inventory and Analysis program. FIA monitors the health of our country’s forest resource and its credible data is the centerpiece of our sector’s sustainability claims.
- Renews Energy title programs incentivizing biomass heat and power projects. Among those programs are the Rural Energy for America Program and the Bioenergy Program for Advanced Biofuels which is a direct payment program for producers of advanced biofuels, including wood pellet producers. This title also reauthorizes the Biomass Crop Assistance Program.
While the legislation received bipartisan support in committee, its future is uncertain as it moves forward in the legislative process. Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-MN) was critical of the measure leading up to and throughout the committee markup. Democrat Members of Congress have opposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that were made as part of H.R. 1 last year.
In the Senate, Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-AR) has signaled that he intends to markup a Farm Bill reauthorization measure in the coming months, but as Yogi Berra famously quipped “it’s getting late early.” Legislating in the 119th Congress will slow to a halt the closer we get to the November mid term elections. Passage may come down to the mad legislative dash that now seems to be an annual event in D.C. Nevertheless, the Hardwood Federation team will continue to work the process aggressively to secure our priorities in whatever Farm Bill product emerges later this year. As always, we will keep you apprised of our progress and may be reaching out to you to help amplify our advocacy efforts in the weeks ahead.