Boozman: Senate Farm Bill markup a few weeks away

U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., said Thursday (May 7) that the Senate will mark up its latest version of the Farm Bill in the next few weeks and called farmers’ plight a “generational situation.”

The U.S. House of Representatives on April 30 passed its version of the Farm Bill, calling it the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026.

However, Boozman said that bill contains controversial provisions that would prevent the Senate version from attracting the Democratic support it will need to reach 60 votes and overcome a Democratic filibuster.

“The good news is, is that there’s tremendous sympathy in Congress,” he said. “If you look at what we’ve shelled out in the last year and a half, including $68 billion for 85% of the Farm Bill, it’s been well over $100 billion. That’s a lot of money by any standards.”

That $68 billion comes from the farm portion of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year. But many farmers can’t wait until October when that money becomes available. Boozman said farmers are losing money regardless of what they are planting, and they need bridge payments until more money arrives.

“Discounting Iran and anything else, when we talk to all of our economists, whether it’s the University of Arkansas, the Department of Agriculture, all of them, they feel like next year’s not going to get any better,” said Boozman, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee. “So we’ve got to work hard to get new markets. We’ve got to value-add our products here in order to keep our farmers in existence.”

He said the previous 2018 Farm Bill is based on data from 2012, when the world was very different. He said rural America is dependent on farming.

Boozman made his remarks Thursday after visiting the Little Rock Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Center, a technology hub meant to improve emergency response, investigation and crime prevention.

The center will play a key role in the Arkansas Criminal Intelligence Network (ACIN) and will allow crime information to be better shared by law enforcement agencies across the state. Boozman secured a $5.5 million federal grant for ACIN from his post on the Senate Appropriations Committee. He toured the facility and took questions afterwards along with Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott and LRPD Police Chief Heath Helton.

The grant will allow ACIN to expand a statewide framework that helps law enforcement agencies share existing records, identify criminal patterns, and support investigations, according to a press release from Boozman’s office. The system is projected to go live Jan. 1, 2027.

Helton said ACIN will allow agencies to communicate with each other more effectively than traditional communication methods that cause delays.

“ACIN allows the integration of networks between agencies to be able to talk to one another, as opposed to where now, not a lot of agencies are able to do that,” Helton said. “It’s the information sharing that it’s going to be huge for our agencies.”

Helton said some states have done a variation of this.

However, he said, “I think the approach that we have taken collectively as chiefs, and those that have signed on to this effort, it’s really, I think, a model going forward for other agencies and other jurisdictions across the country to possibly follow.”

Boozman also secured $3.5 million for the city of Jonesboro’s Real-Time Crime Center among other public safety-related funding.