Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas, held a markup hearing on his version of the Farm Bill on Thursday, August 6. It didn’t go very well.
In the long-delayed milestone meeting – which could ultimately reshape Rural Americans connections to the Internet – Republicans were unable to move their bill forward. Democrats held together, and the absence of two GOP senators, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, meant the measure failed on a 10-11 vote.
Most people think of the Farm Bill primarily because of its connections to crop insurance, commodity price supports, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). But the legislation, which Congress reauthorizes roughly every five years, governs an enormous swath of American agricultural and rural policy, including conservation programs, farm credit, rural water and wastewater infrastructure, forestry, and energy.
The current fight between the House and Senate over SNAP funding levels has been the loudest obstacle to passage, and proved to be the case on Thursday. But tucked inside the Farm Bill’s rural development title is a provision that governs the future of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect broadband program.
What’s at Stake in the Farm Bill for Broadband
ReConnect has provided more than $4.4 billion in loans and grants for rural broadband deployment since 2018, reaching some of America’s most remote and expensive-to-serve communities. The House Farm Bill, passed in April by a narrow 224-200 margin, would make ReConnect permanent.
But the House version sets minimum project speeds at just 50 Megabits per second (Mbps) for downloads and 25 Mbps for uploads. And it restricts eligibility to areas lacking 25 Mbps for downloads and 3 Mbps for uploads for service. Critics say that – as with previous broadband programs such as the Connect America Fund deploying broadband at 10 Mbps for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads, such low thresholds would doom Rural America to a lower tier of service.
The proposed Senate version takes a more ambitious approach. In addition to making ReConnect permanent, it would use higher required speeds and broader eligibility. At a previous hearing on the topic before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Jesse Shekleton, director of Broadband Operations at Jo-Carroll Energy pushed for the higher speed standard. “Demands for bandwidth on farms will continue to grow,” he said
The Farm Bill also matters for broadband beyond ReConnect. Both the House and Senate versions would codify technical assistance for rural broadband planning and include provisions preventing ReConnect from overlapping with the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) grant program of the U.S. Commerce Department.
Under Threat From Both Sides
Even as Congress debates how to strengthen ReConnect, the program faces pressure from an unexpected direction: The USDA itself proposed canceling $40 million in unused ReConnect funds in its fiscal year 2027 budget request. House appropriators broke with that request and restored the funding in June, a rare instance of Congress overruling an agency on its own program budget.
But with BEAD money now flowing, calls to eliminate USDA broadband programs as duplicative have grown louder.
Broadband Now ‘Table Stakes’ for Rural Economic Development
Broadband and rural economic development was the subject of Wednesday’s Broadband Breakfast Live Online discussion. In it, panelists said that broadband has become the price of admission for a rural community rather than a growth strategy on its own.
Well-connected rural counties post 18% higher per capita income and roughly 210% higher business growth than underserved peers, according to a Center for Rural Innovation study cited by Bartlett Cleland, executive director of the Innovation Economy Alliance.
Also contributing to the discussion was Amy Huffman, policy director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, who cited her 2011 master’s thesis on the question of whether rural residents would get online if networks were built. Her answer – then and now – is maybe.
Also weighing in on the benefits for rural communities was Jonathan Chambers, co-CEO of Conexon, which works with co-ops to build fiber networks, and has helped transform connectivity in many rural communities. Watch the discussion on Broadband Breakfast.
On the Ground, BEAD Is Getting Complicated
On another front, the $42.5 billion BEAD program is now becoming operational in states across the country, with providers moving into permitting and early construction. Minnesota signed its first construction contract under the $42.5 billion federal program on July 30.
California cleared federal review July 17, leaving only Illinois as the last state waiting on sign-off from both the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
But being approved is not the same as being built. Minnesota’s projects will reach 74,739 locations with $378.9 million in federal money and nearly $190 million in matching funds. The state must place its remaining initial projects under contract by Oct. 8. Getting the first one signed took more than 18 rounds of revisions with federal reviewers.
And often, the fights are over poles. Electric cooperatives, which own much of the existing pole infrastructure in rural America and are well-positioned to build broadband alongside it, are finding BEAD’s pole attachment rules onerous. Two co-ops said they turned down tentative BEAD awards entirely because compliance costs made the projects unworkable.
NTIA, however, has defended this pole-attachment policy as necessary for deployment.
Starlink Changes the Math – Again
An accounting of rural broadband in mid-2026 has to grapple with Starlink, a key part of Elon Musk’s now-public company, SpaceX. Low-Earth orbit satellite internet has improved dramatically in speed and reliability. So much so that Starlink’s performance is showing up in cable company Q2 earnings calls.
Comcast, Charter, and Shentel have all faced questions from Wall Street analysts about rural customer losses to satellite — a signal that Starlink is now a genuine competitive threat in markets those companies assumed were captive.
This feeds the argument of some that federal programs are racing to build fiber infrastructure that commercial satellite has already rendered unnecessary. But that argument doesn’t account for exactly how capacity-constrained Starlink is in dense-use scenarios. It also doesn’t account for questionable reliability standards for Starlink – as good as it is – versus symmetrical fiber networks.
This article was produced in collaboration with Broadband Breakfast, a news and events community focused on broadband infrastructure, investment, and impact.