Congress quietly erases farm equity programs without debate
H.R. 8374 — Equal Treatment for Farmers Act · Filed by Mark Harris (R-NC) · 26 cosponsors · Introduced Apr 20, 2026 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill systematically removes all references to 'socially disadvantaged farmers' from federal agricultural law and adds a blanket prohibition on USDA programs providing any preference based on race or gender. It strikes language from crop insurance, farm loans, conservation programs, and other USDA initiatives that previously targeted support to historically marginalized farming groups, replacing them with references only to 'beginning' and 'veteran' farmers.
Why we flagged it
The bill functions as a sweeping deregulation of equity-focused agricultural programs by systematically deleting statutory language rather than amending policy. It uses mechanical redaction (striking text) to obscure the substantive policy reversal—eliminating targeted support without debate over whether such support serves a public purpose.
What the text implies
- Eliminates USDA's legal authority to track or report on disparities in program access by race/ethnicity, making future discrimination harder to detect or remedy.
- Repeals Section 201 of the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act (Pub. L. 117–328), which may have contained specific funding or authority for socially disadvantaged farmer programs—the full text of that section is not provided, creating uncertainty about what is being eliminated.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
large-scale commodity farmers (predominantly white); agricultural lenders (reduced compliance burden); farm equipment manufacturers (broader market access)