Rep. Salinas Delivers Opening Remarks During Farm Bill Markup

Click hereto watch Rep. Salinas' full remarks.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Congresswoman Andrea Salinas (OR-06) delivered opening remarks during the House Agriculture Committee's markup of the 2026 Farm Bill. In her remarks, Rep. Salinas raised concerns about the partisan drafting process of the bill. She also called attention to several harmful provisions in the bill, such as outdated wildfire policy mandates, harmful SNAP cost shifts that would impact nearly 800,000 Oregonians, the lack of direct disaster relief for farmworkers, and the absence of key bipartisan priorities.

Rep. Salinas acknowledged some welcome additions to the Farm Bill, such as the inclusion of key forestry provisions from her Timber Innovation for Building Rural Communities Act. However, she made clear that these improvements do not outweigh the bill's broader shortcomings.

A transcript of Salinas' remarks is available below:

Thank you, Chairman Thompson and Ranking Member Craig.

The people of Oregon's Sixth District sent me here to represent their interests and needs, and since I first arrived to Congress in 2023, I have consistently advocated for the economic and safety-net priorities of Oregonians.

Despite some positive provisions for Oregonians in this Farm Bill Reauthorization, when taken as a whole, this bill is unacceptable. It fails to meet the needs of Oregonians and should in no way be considered a bipartisan compromise.

My district is home to a wealth of agricultural diversity, from Christmas trees to hazelnuts and, of course, our world-famous Willamette Valley wine grapes. I've fought to ensure all our producers' needs, including specialty crop growers', are prioritized in the Farm Bill. I'm pleased to see the text establishes a specialty crop advisory committee and create a framework for future specialty crop disaster assistance.

As Ranking Member of the Forestry Subcommittee and representing a state that boasts 30 million acres of some of the world's most productive forests, I have made it my goal to invest in our wild land firefighting workforce, timber industry, and forest recreation, research, and management priorities.

As such, I am grateful that the Chairman's proposal includes parts of my bill, the Timber Innovation for Building Rural Communities Act, which would reduce the match requirement for the Wood Innovation Grant Program by nearly half and establish a platform for measuring and tracking carbon emissions, sequestration, and storage of wood products.

Even with some of these welcome additions to the Farm Bill, they do not make up for all the ways this bill is lacking. To start, my home state of Oregon is nearly 50 percent forested. With that, comes the reality of forest fires, which are increasingly frequent and more devastating. Despite this reality, this Farm Bill would actually turn back the clock on best practice wildfire mitigation strategies by requiring the Forest Service to suppress fires within 24 hours under what is known as the "10 a.m. policy".

This practice is so outdated that our own government Forest Service website calls the 10 a.m. policy a, in quotes, "strategy of the past that unfortunately helped create the wildfire crisis of today."

Instead of bolstering our wildland firefighter workforce through this Farm Bill, we are instead making the job of firefighters more difficult through outdated and rejected fire science policy.

On top of endangering our firefighters with illogical mandates, this Administration has also cut 4,000 workers from the Forest Service and has gone as far as greenlighting detentions of firefighters by ICE. This past August, my constituent, who is here legally on a U Visa, was arrested at a fire camp during an active fire on the Olympic Peninsula. Tell me what message this sends to our firefighters about how much we value the lifesaving work they do on our behalf.

Across the board, families and farmers are struggling to make ends meet, and this bill does little to nothing to make up for the harm caused to farmers from the Trump Administration's hostile trade policies and the harm caused to families when this Committee slashed nearly $200 billion dollars from SNAP last year.

I recognize this Farm Bill is repurposing dollars from the One, Big Beautiful bill Act to fund Market Access and Foreign Market Development programs, but the impact of that funding is blunted by the tariffs that have led to nearly $44 billion dollars in agricultural trade deficit and skyrocketing input costs.

Let's not forget that the funding for these programs was off the backs of millions of people who will be kicked off their SNAP benefits at a time when grocery prices are only skyrocketing.

In fact, these cuts to SNAP will cause nearly 800,000 Oregonians to lose their food benefits. Of these Oregonians, one in four are children, and one in eight are seniors. In less than a year, every state will also be required to pick up double the cost of administering the SNAP program. In Oregon, that is $80 million dollars the state is expected to absorb.

As Ranking Member of the Horticulture Subcommittee, I have consistently said that specialty crops have been left behind for too long. The majority's Farm Bill does not do nearly enough for the specialty crop growers in my district. There is no new money for disaster assistance, no enhancements to specialty crop insurance, and nothing to address the headwinds producers are facing from rising input costs and labor difficulties. This bill only perpetuates the status quo - leaving specialty crops behind.

And I'm not finished. This bill comes up short in so many other ways. It does not include direct disaster relief for farm workers who keep our food systems running. It does not include summer food delivery for hungry children in rural communities. It does not include my bipartisan and bicameral Domestic Organic Investment Act that would give organic producers tools to increase capacity, modernize their operations, and expand their businesses.

I could go on. My colleagues and I in the minority understand that compromises must be made to get a Farm Bill passed. None of us expect to get everything on our wish list. At the very least, we expect good-faith engagement and a good-faith proposal that matches our commitment to bipartisanship.

Instead, we were locked out of this process and only given five business days to review the text, consult stakeholders, and prepare for this one-sided hearing. The only reason we ended up with more time to review this bill was because of a blizzard, not bipartisanship.

Farmers deserve better. Families deserve better. Thank you, and I yield back.

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