Sponsors (2)
The bill directs sustained federal funding to accelerate farm mechanization, training, and rural tech deployment—boosting productivity and safety for many farms while posing taxpayer costs and risks of worker displacement and concentrated federal grant awards.
Farmers and specialty crop producers gain access to a dedicated ~$30M/year (FY2026–2031) for mechanization and automation R&D, increasing productivity and lowering production costs.
Farmworkers can receive training and retraining to operate and maintain new equipment, improving their skills and potential wages.
Developing prototypes, field-testing, and commercializing mechanization technologies could reduce hazardous manual tasks and improve farmworker safety.
Some manual farmworkers may face reduced demand for labor and short-term displacement as farms adopt mechanization.
Taxpayers will fund at least ~$30M/year for six years, which could divert resources from other agricultural or rural priorities.
Waiving matching-fund requirements may concentrate awards among recipients with less local buy-in and increase federal grant costs if matches are not provided.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a new SCRI program to fund specialty crop mechanization and automation R&D and reserves at least $30M/year from SCRI for FY2026–FY2031.
Official title: Amend the Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act of 1998 to reauthorize the specialty crop research initiative and establish a specialty crop mechanization and automation research and development program, and for other purposes.
Introduced June 2, 2026 by Adam Schiff · Last progress June 2, 2026
Creates a new competitive Specialty Crop Mechanization and Automation Research and Development Program inside the Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) to fund research, prototype testing, adoption, and commercialization of mechanization and automation for specialty crops. It authorizes the Agriculture Secretary to waive matching requirements, sets program priorities (including training/retraining of farmworkers and communication of results), and reserves at least $30 million per year from existing SCRI funds for FY2026–FY2031 for the new program, with rules to reallocate unobligated reserved funds back to the Initiative. Also makes technical cross‑reference and conforming edits to related agriculture statutes to reflect the new subsection lettering and program placement. No new standalone appropriation is created; the set‑aside is drawn from existing SCRI funding authority for the specified fiscal years.