Sponsors (12)
Official title: Amend the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 to reauthorize the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network, and for other purposes.
Introduced July 15, 2025 by Tammy Baldwin · Last progress July 15, 2025
The bill strengthens crisis response and formal treatment linkages for agricultural and rural populations but does so with reduced funding and a narrow provider referral scope that could limit reach and omit some local supports.
Farm and ranch workers and other agricultural workers gain expanded access to immediate crisis support and formal referral pathways to behavioral health and substance use treatment through funded crisis lines and partnerships with certified clinics, FQHCs, rural health clinics, and critical access hospitals.
Rural communities see improved access to care because the program leverages existing rural health clinics, FQHCs, and critical access hospitals to build targeted referral networks and sustain treatment linkages.
Farmers, rural communities, and taxpayers face a cut in annual authorized funding from $10 million to $5 million, reducing the federal dollars available for grants and services.
Smaller funding may limit the number, geographic coverage, and sustainability of crisis-line services and referral partnerships, reducing service availability in high-need regions.
Farmers and rural communities may be left without access to some local or community-based supports because the program prioritizes referrals only to specified federally recognized provider types.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Adds crisis lines as an eligible use of grants, authorizes $5M/year for FY2026–2030, and lets grantees form referrals with five named provider types to connect farmworkers to behavioral health and substance use services.
Adds crisis line services to allowable uses of USDA grants that help connect agricultural workers with behavioral health, substance use, and wellness care. It reduces and reauthorizes annual funding at $5 million per year for FY2026–2030 (replacing a prior $10 million/year FY2019–2023 authorization) and replaces the program's reporting requirement with an explicit authorization for grant recipients to form referral relationships with five types of health providers to link farmworkers to care. The change is narrow and focused on expanding eligible services and formalizing referral partnerships to improve access to mental health and substance use services for farmworkers, especially in rural areas. It alters funding levels and shifts program administration from a reporting duty to relationship-building with designated provider types (community behavioral health clinics, health centers, rural health clinics, FQHCs, and critical access hospitals).