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SUNDAY, AUGUST 2, 2026 | SPECIAL REPORT & ANALYSIS
SPECIAL REPORT | FARM BILL 2.0
Infographic: From Thursday’s Markup to the President’s Desk: Seven Gates for Farm Bill 2.0
The Senate Ag Committee’s Aug. 6 markup continues a seven-step gauntlet — manager’s amendment, committee and floor votes, CBO scores, conference and a lame-duck wild card — with the current farm bill extension expiring Sept. 30.
Analysis · August 2, 2026
Farm Bill 2.0 enters its decisive week with the path to enactment visible but narrow: seven procedural gates stand between Chairman John Boozman’s (R-Ark.) revised text and the president’s desk, and the first three arrive within four days.
The near-term sequence is set. The base text released July 31 — permanent year-round E15 plus a one-year SNAP cost-share delay backed by a tougher 20% penalty tier from fiscal 2031 — still lacks an agreed offset. The manager’s amendment, expected Aug. 5 or the morning of the markup, is the first tell: joint Boozman/Klobuchar authorship signals a bipartisan bill, while a chairman-only package signals a partisan markup. At Thursday’s markup, amendments are the currency — which ones are approved to be offered, and which survive recorded votes, will rewrite the bill in real time before a committee deadlocked 11-11 with Mitch McConnell absent decides whether to report it. Boozman needs at least one Democrat.
Beyond committee, the gates get taller. CBO has not publicly scored the revised bill — a formal estimate is effectively required for floor action and conference. The Senate floor demands 60 votes and a second amendment fight; conference must bridge the refinery-relief and SNAP gaps with the House-passed bill; and both chambers must then approve the conference agreement, with post-Nov. 3 action hinging on election results and the shape of a lame-duck session. We previously put the odds a farm bill reaches the president’s desk before the midterms at 25% — we will reassess once we see how many Democrats, if any, vote for the Senate package.
Figure 1. Farm Bill 2.0: the road from the Aug. 6 Senate Agriculture Committee markup to enactment, with the CBO cost-estimate gate between committee and floor action. Source: Senate Agriculture Committee; bill text; Ag Policy & Markets Daily analysis.
Sources: Senate Ag Committee; Agricultural Act of 2026 bill text; CBO; committee-staff estimates. Timeline assumes the committee reports a bill; dates beyond Aug. 6 are procedural windows, not scheduled events.
AG POLICY & MARKETS DAILY | SPECIAL REPORT | FARM BILL 2.0 — SUNDAY, AUG. 2, 2026
