Minnesota House Passes Bipartisan Agriculture Budget Bill

(KNSI) — The Minnesota House passed the 2025 Agriculture Budget bill on Thursday with overwhelming bipartisan support in a 130-3 vote.

The legislation, co-authored by Agriculture Committee co-chairs Rep. Rick Hansen (DFL-South St. Paul) and Rep. Paul Anderson (R-Starbuck), allocates $172.3 million for 2026-27 to fund the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, the Board of Animal Health, the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute, and the Office of Broadband Development. The budget this year is $17 million more than the previous biennium.

Hansen issued a statement saying the budget has more funding for Local Food Purchasing and Farm to School programs while addressing recent federal cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The legislation also includes protections for farm, poultry, and dairy workers and secured retail testing for milk and poultry products to address bird flu. It also bumps up the Down Payment Assistance Grant program to support small emerging farmers.

Rep. Anderson emphasized the bill’s focus on animal health protection: “One of my top priorities with this bill is ensuring the Board of Animal Health has the funding it needs to respond to any future livestock disease outbreaks. They’ve had their hands full in recent years managing highly pathogenic bird flu, which has impacted our turkey and chicken flocks. Now that the virus has been found in dairy cattle as well, it’s more important than ever to protect our state’s livestock and poultry.” It also rejects fee increases proposed by the Department of Agriculture and offers protection for grain elevators from potentially significant cost increases.

The bill now moves to conference committee, where the work starts to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate agriculture packages before final approval votes.

“I’m glad we worked together and got this bill done,” Anderson said. “With a 67-67 split in the House, bipartisanship is a must this session, and I thank the committee members for keeping that in mind so we could get this bill through the committee process.”

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