Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.
House Agriculture Committee Prepares for Farm Bill Markup
The House Agriculture Committee’s Farm Bill markup will take in the coming days after being delayed due to a winter storm.
But the latest draft of the House Farm Bill has been a source of concern for some anti-hunger and sustainable agriculture advocates. Ty Jones Cox, Vice President for Food Assistance, at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that the latest draft “fails to address the crisis created by cuts to SNAP enacted last summer.” And Abby J. Leibman, President and CEO of MAZON, says that the legislation “is not a viable or reasonable legislative response to the sabotaging of our federal anti-hunger programs, and [House Agriculture Chair Glenn] Thompson knows it.”
This past week more than 100 hunger organizations—worried about cuts to a bipartisan food security program for rural seniors—also sent a letter to House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders. They urged Congress to preserve the Delivering for Rural Seniors Act in the Farm Bill.
On the agriculture side, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) says that the draft “falls unmistakably short.” NSAC notes there are some bright spots, such as a greater investment in 1890 land grant universities and updated Agriculture and Food Research Initiative priority areas, which include language around regionally adapted cultivars and breeding for environmental resilience. But they also worry that after significant cuts to the workforce of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the legislation does nothing to stabilize the agency or increase staffing levels to ensure farmers can access the federal programs they rely on.
U.S. Farmers Reject Bid for Land
The Guardian reports that U.S. farmers are rejecting multi-million dollar bids for their land as tech companies race to build the massive data centers needed to power artificial intelligence. A report from Hines, a real estate investment manager, estimates that 40,000 acres of land for datacenter development will be needed over the next five years to support new projects. That’s double the amount currently in use.
But companies are facing resistance to their plans. One Kentucky farmer, Ida Huddleston, received an offer on the farmland worth more than US$33 million. But the land has been in her family for centuries, and she told them she wasn’t interested. Huddleston, who’s 82, says that her entire life “is nothing but the land,” which has provided her with “anything and everything” she has needed. When the offer came through, she responded, “You don’t have enough to buy me out. I’m not for sale.”
And when Timothy Grosser in Kentucky rejected his first offer of US$8 million, developers asked him to name his price. He pushed back again, telling them “There is none.”
Grosser reports that some neighbors are giving in—and he doesn’t blame them, especially when the offers are high and companies are warning they may invoke eminent domain to have the land seized. But around the country, many producers are continuing to hold out. One farmer in Pennsylvania rejected a US$15 million offer on his land last month. Around the same time another, based in Wisconsin, turned down an offer of US$80 million.
It’s an encouraging story, especially in light of new U.S. Department of Agriculture data, which shows that the number of U.S. farms shrank by 15,000 in 2025.
Brazil Celebrates Drop in Deforestation
Satellite monitoring shows that deforestation has continued to decline in early 2026 and the clearing of trees between August 2025 and January of this year is at the lowest levels for this period since 2014.
Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said that the progress is thanks to coordinated government action. Seventy of the 81 municipalities with the most deforestation have joined federal initiatives that are focused on reducing illegal clearing. Authorities are also leveraging resources from the Amazon Fund to further support enforcement and prevention efforts.
According to Silva, if the current trend is maintained, Brazil could see the lowest deforestation rate in history this year.
Major Food Brands Voices Support for the Food Date Labeling Act (FDLA)
More than 30 brands and food industry supporters recently signed onto an open letter from the Zero Food Waste Coalition and the Consumer Brands Association, which calls on Congress to pass the bipartisan Food Date Labeling Act.
Roughly one third of food goes to waste in the United States each year. According to data from ReFED, confusion over date labels leads to 4.3 million tons of food waste in the U.S. each year, which costs households and businesses more than US$22 billion annually. ReFED also reports that more eaters are discarding edible food prematurely due to date label confusion than they did a decade ago.
Now, major companies are backing legislation that can help curb the problem. FMI-The Food Industry Association, Walmart, Amazon, and Unilever are among the businesses that signed onto the letter, which urges policymakers to clarify date-labeling standards.
The Food Date Labeling Act would require that businesses choose from one of two standard date labels. The options are a Best if Used By label, which indicates when a product’s quality begins to decline, and the Use By label, which indicates when a product should be discarded. The Act also requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Food and Drug Administration to work together to provide education on the standardized date labels. And it makes donations of food past the Best if Used By date allowable if the products meet safety specifications.
Action on Food Waste Can Help Curb AMR Risks
A new review paper from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization looks at the risks of spreading anti-microbial resistance. According to FAO, food loss and waste can be “a reservoir and even an accelerator” for anti-microbial resistance (AMR) because it’s a good substrate for bacterial growth, especially in landfills and open dumps. The researchers say some studies have actually found a higher abundance of antimicrobial resistant genes in food waste than sewage sludge or swine manure.
Although animal agriculture is a known contributor to AMR, the researchers say that their work shows that food loss and waste should be integrated into AMR surveillance and management strategies. And when conditions are optimized, composting, anaerobic digestion, and converting surplus food to animal feed can reduce antimicrobial resistance genes and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Junxia [jun-shah] Song, Chief of the One Health and Disease Control Branch at FAO who helped lead the review, says that linking food loss and waste to AMR is “both timely and strategic” because “it creates an opportunity for coordinated action that reduces waste while strengthening global efforts to contain AMR.”
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Photo courtesy of Yogesh Pedamkar, Unsplash
