Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026

Floor Speech

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Ms. PINGREE. Mr. Chair, I thank the ranking member for yielding me the time.

Mr. Chair, I am sorry to say that this is a terrible farm bill. As a result of this bill, more people will go hungry, more farmers will lose assistance to the conservation programs that are already oversubscribed, and more farmers who are struggling to make ends meet will find it more and more difficult to hang on to their farms.

I have a lot of concerns about this bill, but I would like to use the limited time I have to show some strong support of Representative Luna's pesticide amendment. I am proud to say that her amendment, which was made in order, mirrors the language of the bipartisan amendment I sponsored with Representative Massie. I thank Representative Luna for also working on this important issue.

Our amendment to strike the pesticide liability shield sections from the farm bill has drawn broad bipartisan support, both within this Chamber and across America.

The harmful language that the Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee included in the farm bill is a handout to Big Agriculture and Big Chemical. It preempts States' rights to regulate pesticide usage or labeling. It provides a liability shield for pesticide manufacturers. Put simply, this language puts chemical company profits over the health of Americans.

More than 200,000 Roundup-related healthcare claims have been made against Bayer. Behind the numbers are real people--husbands, wives, farmers, even pets--with heartbreaking stories. People suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and other devastating cancers are racking up outrageous medical bills.

What is worse, chemical manufacturers spend time and money developing additional uses for these same chemicals, beyond killing weeds. We see glyphosate now used to kill weeds to dry crops before harvest, and it means it makes its way into more and more of our food system. That means the bread, the hummus, and the pasta we are eating are more likely to contain this toxic and dangerous chemical. More and more people are ingesting it without even realizing it.

If this language is not removed, we will have handed companies like Bayer exactly what they have spent millions of dollars and lobbying power on: legal immunity.

Earlier this year, I successfully sought to strip this similar language from the FY 2026 Appropriations Interior funding bill. Unfortunately, the work we did in that committee did not deter Bayer, which, armed with 53 lobbyists and millions of dollars, immediately got to work to get their get-out-of-jail-free card elsewhere: on this farm bill and at the Supreme Court.

Mr. Chair, Democrats and Republicans and citizens across this country agree: Keep this language out of the farm bill. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

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Ms. PINGREE. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, even though I am not opposed to it.

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Ms. PINGREE. Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague for bringing up this amendment. The bill this amendment is based on has already passed the House by voice vote and now sits idly in the Senate.

I am glad my colleagues are paying attention to this issue and are supportive of promoting precision agriculture for our farmers.

Mr. Chair, I urge all Members to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. PINGREE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for both supporting this amendment, which I also supported, and speaking in favor of it.

Pesticide preemption has received an extraordinary amount of attention in the past year, as is appropriate when the Federal Government considers overriding States' rights.

Litigation on this topic was discussed at the Supreme Court on Monday. A dominant pesticide manufacturer just announced a possible settlement of $7.25 billion. President Trump has invoked national security powers to mandate the production of glyphosate.

There is opposition to Federal preemption of State liability laws on both sides of the aisle. Yet, the Republican majority insisted at every turn on including these provisions in what should be a bipartisan farm bill that delivers for farmers and families.

This amendment is not extreme. It would not ban pesticides or require any additional regulatory burden on the manufacturers. Quite literally, it would preserve the status quo and allow the Supreme Court to examine this issue separately and the complicated legal issues at its core.

The question of Federal preemption also sits next to a truly poisonous provision that would waive all other laws for registered pesticides, including the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.

Registration under EPA's pesticide process provides instructions for use but does not include any requirements to guard against contamination of our air and water supply.

Let's be clear: The Clean Water Act already includes a broad exemption for agricultural stormwater runoff because Congress knew that some amount of pesticide runoff was inevitable.

However, the EPA is obligated to separately permit intentional uses of pesticides that enter our waterways, as the Sixth Circuit decided in 2009.

It is astonishing to me that my Republican colleagues wrote this bill to abolish that protection for rural communities' water supplies.

I want to acknowledge the bipartisan effort by Members in Congress and invested citizens on the outside whose relentless efforts are why this amendment was even allowed to be debated today.

Mr. Chairman, I thank Representative Luna for her tireless efforts on this front, and I hope my colleagues will heed her example and vote for this amendment. I urge all Members to support this.

Mr. AUSTIN SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

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Ms. PINGREE. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition, even though I am not opposed to the amendment.

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Ms. PINGREE. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentlewoman from South Carolina for introducing this amendment and wholeheartedly support it. An Office of Seafood will be an important resource for coordination across the aquaculture sector.

I am fortunate enough to represent the State of Maine, so fishermen are an important part of our economy, our culture, and the communities that we all live in. I am lucky enough to live in the heart of lobster harvesting territory, so I know firsthand how important the fisheries are to our State and to everybody who hopefully will come to visit our State and enjoy our delicious seafood.

I have been listening to Representative Thompson throughout the night talk about how he did a lot of listening tours and traveled around the country, and I was very privileged to have him come and visit in the State of Maine. While he was there we made sure, even though it was an agriculture listening tour--because the office of aquaculture is an important part of the USDA--that he got to visit an oyster farmer, that he ate some of our delicious seafood, that included scallops, oysters, maybe a little bit of lobster, and I think even a bit of seaweed he managed to choke down, and we were appreciative of him trying all of the many seafood in our State.

I have always been surprised, as a member of the Agriculture Committee and getting to know the USDA, knowing that aquaculture resides there, there are fishery issues that come up there, and fishermen often don't get the same opportunity to utilize the resources as farmers do.

We all in this country understand the important role that farmers play in producing American food, and we appreciate them so much, but sometimes we forget that fishermen need to have access to many of the same resources. Fish is an important part of our diet. We should eat more of it, and we should certainly eat more domestically produced and harvested seafood.

I think this office will go a long way to provide our fishermen with a central source of outreach and information that focuses on the seafood industry.

This amendment codifying the office will give the security needed to create working relationships within the USDA and across the seafood sector. I have heard from many people in the seafood industry and the fishermen ever since this was originally announced by the USDA and Secretary Rollins, encouraging me to support this, to do anything I could to make sure that this was a stable entity within the USDA. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this amendment and talk about the importance of making sure it is permanent and our fishermen continue to have this access.

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Ms. PINGREE. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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