Commodities, Derivatives, Risk Management, and Trade

The Subcommittee on Commodities, Derivatives, Risk Management, and Trade is one of five subcommittees within the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. It focuses on a specialized slice of agricultural policy: the markets, financial instruments, and trade mechanisms that farmers and agricultural producers rely on. The subcommittee was renamed in 2025 to reflect its expanded jurisdiction to include derivatives and digital assets.

The subcommittee has jurisdiction over legislation governing agricultural commodities including cotton, dairy products, feed grains, wheat, tobacco, peanuts, sugar, wool, rice, oilseeds, and soybeans, as well as price and income support programs for farmers. It also oversees crop insurance and agricultural trade policy. Additionally, the subcommittee addresses emerging areas like digital commodity markets and derivatives regulation, working closely with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates futures and options markets that help farmers manage price risk.

Chaired by Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), with Ranking Member Cory Booker (D-NJ), the subcommittee has 13 members. Recent activity includes bipartisan work on digital asset market regulation. In late 2025, Chairman Boozman and Ranking Member Booker released a discussion draft on regulating spot digital commodity trading, which evolved into the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act. The full Agriculture Committee advanced this legislation in January 2026, demonstrating the subcommittee's role in shaping emerging commodity market policy.

As a subcommittee, it conducts initial hearings and reviews bills before they move to the full committee. While no bills were recently referred directly to the subcommittee in the data provided, the subcommittee's work on digital commodity regulation shows how it prepares groundwork on complex financial and agricultural issues for broader committee consideration.