Committee Releases FY26 Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA Bill

Jun 06, 2025

The House Appropriations Committee released the Fiscal Year 2026 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Bill. The bill will be considered in subcommittee tomorrow, June 5th at 10:30 a.m. The markup will be live-streamed and can be found on the Committee’s website.

Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Subcommittee Chairman Andy Harris said, “The Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration Appropriations Bill reflects a clear, conservative commitment to fiscal responsibility while ensuring that America’s farmers, ranchers, and rural communities remain a top priority. This legislation also prioritizes agricultural research, rural broadband expansion, and protects our food and drug supply, all while reducing the wasteful spending of the Biden Administration era. Just as importantly, by supporting fresh, affordable, American-grown food, this bill helps Make America Healthy Again. America’s farmers feed the world, and this bill ensures they have the investment, support, and resources they deserve while reducing the burgeoning federal deficit.”

Chairman Tom Cole said, “The prosperity of our future golden age depends on the strength and perseverance of our farmers, ranchers, and rural communities. This FY26 bill delivers targeted investments to protect U.S. agriculture and family farms, bolster agricultural research, and safeguard access to nutrition and health programs. From livestock and crops to pharmaceuticals and broadband, the legislation strengthens the agriculture economy and infrastructure across the nation. Just as our producers responsibly tend to the land, Chairman Harris has stewarded this legislation to protect core duties while upholding fiscal responsibility.”

The Fiscal Year 2026 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Bill

The Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill provides a total discretionary allocation of $25.523 billion, which is $1.163 billion (4.2%) below the Fiscal Year 2025 enacted level.

The bill prioritizes agencies and programs that protect our nation’s food and drug supply; support America’s farmers, ranchers, and rural communities; and ensure low-income Americans have access to nutrition programs. The bill is fiscally responsible and refocuses programs on their core mission while putting the health, safety, and prosperity of American producers and consumers first.

Source : house.gov

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.