YEAREND: Farmland ownership, WOTUS, pesticide labeling issues among top agricultural law stories of 2025
“All of these have effects across the agriculture and food production landscape that will continue to unfold in 2026.” — Harrison Pittman
By the National Agricultural Law Center
Fast facts
- 2025 sees states amend or add foreign ownership of ag land laws
- Solicitor general urges Supreme Court to hear pesticide liability case
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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Foreign ownership of farmland, questions over whether federal law pre-empts state tort law liability and another round of proposed rules for the Clean Water and Endangered Species acts, were among the biggest stories in ag and environmental law in 2025, according to the National Agricultural Law Center.
“Many of the issues in our top 10 have held that ranking from the previous years,” said Harrison Pittman, director of the National Agricultural Law Center. “Some of the issues, like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, are huge and far reaching and will take years for the dust to settle.
“Other issues, such as tariffs, the Make America Healthy Again initiative and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, either changed course or were introduced with a new administration in the White House,” he said. “All of these have effects across the agriculture and food production landscape that will continue to unfold in 2026.”
FOREIGN OWNERSHIP
Limitations on the foreign ownership of farmland have continued to be on the mind of state legislators across the country. Six states amended existing laws, while four additional states passed them for the first time. In addition to legislative action, several courts have also considered the constitutionality of these laws. Recent rulings have been made in cases challenging Florida’s and Texas’s laws, both of which found standing issues that prevented the plaintiffs from successfully filing suits.
WOTUS and ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT
In November, federal agencies issued new proposed rules to revise implementation of both the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. The Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Army Corps of Engineers released a proposal to redefine “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, a key component of the Clean Water Act.
According to EPA and the Corps, the new proposal will bring the definition of WOTUS in line with the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that WOTUS should extend only to “relatively permanent” waters and wetlands that are indistinguishable from such waters due to a continuous surface connection.
A Jan. 5, 2026, deadline has been set for public comment period on the proposal. Similarly, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service issued four proposed rules that would make numerous changes to how the Endangered Species Act is carried out. Specifically, the proposals revise how the two organizations list and delist species, designate critical habitat, and conduct interagency consultation. The proposals would also roll back FWS’s blanket 4(d) rule, a decades-old regulation which allows FWS to automatically apply full ESA protections to species listed as threatened. A comment period on each of the proposed ESA rules closed Dec. 22.
HEMP
The industrial hemp industry was dealt a significant setback in November when Congress reopened the federal government and passed several appropriations bills. One agriculture bill provision closed the so-called “hemp loophole” created by the 2018 Farm Bill, which amended federal law to allow hemp production. The 2018 Farm Bill definition of “hemp” unintentionally resulted in the production and sale of federally unregulated products containing the intoxicating THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, because CBD, or Cannabidiol, which is not a psychoactive chemical, could be taken from legally produced plants and chemically processed into products that are excluded from the definition altogether. In recent years, states have responded to the loophole in a variety of ways, including the regulation of certain products or by banning sale outright. The appropriations act redefined hemp crops based on total THC content and excluded intermediate and final hemp-derived cannabinoid products containing synthesized THC and cannabinoids. As the majority of hemp grown in the United States is used to produce cannabinoids, this will have a significant impact on the industry when it becomes effective on Nov. 12, 2026.
MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN
The Make America Healthy Again movement is another area of policy that received significant attention. On the federal level, this movement is spearheaded by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy and furthered primarily by the actions of both HHS and the Make America Healthy Again Commission. There has also been significant attention to these priorities by state actors. For example, state legislative proposals have involved labeling requirements for foods that contain certain ingredients, attempts to ban food products that contain certain ingredients from school meals, the establishment of a statewide ban on the sale of foods that contain synthetic color dyes, and encouragement to seek a U.S. Department of Agriculture waiver limiting foods that may be purchased with SNAP benefits. SNAP is the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
PESTICIDE LABELS/LIABILITY
The question of whether federal pesticide law preempts state tort law liability claims continued to be top-of-mind, stemming from lawsuits filed with claims that exposure to pesticides caused plaintiffs to develop some sort of illness or injury. Pesticide manufacturers have argued that the “failure to warn” claims should not be permitted, as they are preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA. FIFRA prevents states from adding language to a federally registered pesticide label that is either different from or in addition to what has been approved at the federal level.
However, plaintiffs argue that failure to warn claims are not preempted because FIFRA prohibits the sale of pesticides that do not include necessary health warnings. In response, some state legislatures have considered laws specifying that a federally approved pesticide label is considered a sufficient defense to similar claims filed in that state. Ultimately, the matter may be resolved if the Supreme Court agrees to hear Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, which asks the high court justices to weigh in on the preemption issue. While it is still unclear whether the court will take the case, a recently filed brief from the Office of the Solicitor General urges the court to not only hear it, but also to rule that FIFRA preempts these types of claims.
Other issues surrounding pesticide registration and labeling were also an ongoing theme. In April, the EPA released its final Insecticide Strategy, outlining various mitigation measures to minimize impact on unintended species. Later, in July, EPA announced a public comment period of its proposal to re-register three dicamba-based herbicides for direct use on dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton crops. While EPA indicated an intention to finalize the labels in time for the products to be available for the 2026 growing season, those labels have not yet been issued. In August, environmental groups asked a federal court to overturn EPA’s decision to register Enlist One and Enlist Duo in a case that could be the first test of EPA’s Herbicide Strategy. Finally, the Natural Resources Defense Council in October asked a federal court to compel EPA to respond to a 2020 petition in a lawsuit that could have long-term implications for the continued availability of neonicotinoids, which are commonly used to protect seeds against insects prior to planting.
TARIFFS and TRADE
Throughout 2025, the Trump administration has increased tariff rates on U.S. imports from trading partners around the globe. To accomplish this, the administration has relied in part on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The act allows the president to regulate transactions in foreign exchange after declaring a national emergency, although no president has ever used the act’s authority to this extent. The constitutional authority to do so was challenged in V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, which was heard by the Supreme Court on Nov. 5, 2025. Other tariff decisions have been mitigated by potential trade agreements with foreign counties. For the most part, these agreements are preliminary, and more time will be needed to see the finalized terms.
LABOR
This year saw substantial changes to the Department of Labor’s H-2A foreign farm worker program. H-2A allows agricultural employers facing a shortage of domestic labor to hire foreign workers in a seasonal or temporary capacity. Prior to 2025, the wages paid to these workers were calculated using the Labor Department’s 2023 Adverse Effect Wage Rate, a regulation intended to set foreign worker wages at a level that does not create an “adverse effect” on the rates of domestic workers.
In August, a federal court issued a ruling vacating the 2023 rule, after which the computation reverted to the 2010 version of the rule. In October, the Labor Department published another interim final rule revising the calculation, which was quickly filed by yet another challenge. The ultimate impact the most recent case will have on the H-2A program remains to be seen, although the interim final rule is currently in effect.
SUPPLY CHAIN
Concerns about competition across the agricultural supply chain remained prominent in 2025. The Trump Administration directed the Department of Justice and USDA to investigate potential anticompetitive conduct among major meatpackers, especially in the beef sector. At the same time, concerns about competition in agricultural inputs such as seeds, crop protection, and fertilizer gained momentum. For example, DOJ expanded inquiries into consolidation among major seed and chemical manufacturers and as recently as Dec. 10, 2025, President Trump ordered federal agencies to “investigate food-related industries within their established areas of expertise and determine whether anti-competitive behavior exists in food supply chains in the United States.”
POLICY
H.R.1, commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, had many provisions of interest to agriculture from both a commodity, crop insurance, and tax perspective. It reauthorized numerous Title 1 programs such as Agriculture Risk Coverage, or ARC, and Price Loss Coverage, or PLC, while increasing reference prices, increasing payment limitations, disregarding LLCs and corporations for purposes of payment limitations and tying eligibility to actively engaged operators. Crop insurance received a funding boost as well as several program and policy changes. On the tax side, the bill made several tax incentives and credits permanent. Most notably, the unified credit for estate taxes was raised permanently and indexed to inflation.
LOOKING AHEAD
“Looking ahead to 2026, many of the top issues from this year will continue to develop,” Pittman said. “Additional areas to watch are challenges to California’s animal welfare law, Proposition 12, and related statutes on issues of preemption, interest in state legislatures around the labeling and sale of cell-cultured proteins, and updates to the Colorado River operating plan.
“We also expect to see issues related to financial distress in the farm economy and state level responses such as amending or creating grain indemnity laws and financial assistance programs,” he said.
A link with more information about each of these stories is available online.
About the National Agricultural Law Center
Created by Congress in 1987, the National Agricultural Law Center serves as the nation’s leading source of agricultural and food law research and information. The NALC works with producers, agribusinesses, state and federal policymakers, lenders, Congressional staffers, attorneys, land grant universities, students, and many others to provide objective, nonpartisan agricultural and food law research and information to the nation’s agricultural community. To learn more about the National Agricultural Law Center and its programs, visit nationalaglawcenter.org/. Follow on X at @Nataglaw.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on three system campuses.
Pursuant to 7 CFR § 15.3, the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services (including employment) without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, sexual preference, pregnancy or any other legally protected status, and is an equal opportunity institution.
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