House Passes Farm Bill – Aerial Applicators Receive No Respite

On April 30, the House of Representatives passed the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (H.R. 7567) by a vote of 224 to 200, marking the furthest a farm bill has advanced since 2018. Of specific note to the aerial application industry, some of the regulatory relief and operational protections that sailed through the Agriculture Committee in March were removed during floor consideration.

The Committee Bill

The original Committee bill included provisions NAAA has long advocated for, most notably Representative David Rouzer’s (R-NC) “Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act,” which would have eliminated duplicative permitting requirements for pesticide applications over or near water. Adopting Rouzer’s language, Section 10207 would have removed the requirement for an NPDES Pesticide General Permit under the Clean Water Act for applications already approved for water safety under FIFRA.

The Committee bill also included significant strengthening of federal pesticide labeling preemption. Sections 10205 and 10206 together would have prevented local governments from imposing their own pesticide regulations on top of EPA’s, protecting operators from a patchwork of municipal restrictions.

The Luna Amendment

Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) led an amendment that stripped Sections 10205, 10206 and 10207 from the bill. The vote was decisive: 280–142 in favor of removing them, with 73 Republicans crossing party lines to join Democrats. The Luna amendment passed with unexpected bipartisan support (280-142), driven in part by public pressure from Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) advocates and coinciding with a Supreme Court hearing on glyphosate litigation.

The result: The NPDES permitting relief is gone. Local and state authority to restrict aerial applications remains intact. The preemption language that would have created national uniformity is stripped.

What is Next

The Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to release its version of the farm bill, with Chairman John Boozman (R-AR) indicating a draft is forthcoming. The current farm bill extension expires September 30, 2026.

While the House floor vote suggests significant opposition to expanding federal preemption, the underlying concerns (duplicative permitting burdens and inconsistent local regulations) haven’t disappeared. NAAA will continue making the case to both chambers that aerial applicators need workable, science-based regulation, not administrative redundancy.