Author: staff

As of 8:43 a.m. CT, December corn was up 1½¢ at $4.18½ per bushel. November soybeans were up 7½¢ at $10.32¾ per bushel. December CBOT wheat was up less than a penny at $5.15¾ per bushel. December KC wheat was down 2¼¢ at $5.04¾ per bushel. December Minneapolis wheat was down 1½¢ at $5.68. This morning USDA released the weekly U.S. Export Sales report. The Brock Report offered this analysis concerning corn and soybean sales: “Net U.S. corn export sales for the week ended Sept. 4 came in at 67.3 million bushels, compared with trade expectations that ran 35.5-67 million…

The Bureau of Land Management has begun the process of rolling back the Biden Administration’s rule allowing conservation leases on its land. The agency on Wednesday released a proposal to rescind the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which aimed to put conservation uses of land on equal footing with grazing, energy production, mining, and recreation. The rule allowed the agency to issue conservation leases to individuals, businesses, nongovernmental organizations or tribal governments for up to 10 years to protect or restore habitats and ecosystems. “The previous administration’s Public Lands Rule had the potential to block access to hundreds of thousands of acres of…

Producers have increased beef output largely by sending larger cattle to slaughter, while pork farms have boosted production largely by increasing the number and sizes of litters, according to a pair of economists. Beef production for all cattle has grown from 629 pounds per animal in 2000 to 724 pounds in 2024 even as the U.S. herd fell to its smallest since 1961.  “Increasing beef production per cow has come, largely, from increased weights. Dressed weights for fed steers and heifers have steadily increased for many years. There is less evidence of changes in calving rates boosting productivity over the…

By Joshua Haiar South Dakota is at the epicenter of this fall’s bird flu season with a total of 134,900 turkeys at three facilities already killed to contain the spread, and reports coming in about thousands more.  The only other state reporting confirmed infections in commercial flocks during the last 30 days is North Dakota, where 60,300 turkeys have been killed in response, according to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Detections this early in the season are troubling, according to Beth Thompson, South Dakota’s state veterinarian. The peak avian influenza seasons typically coincide with…

1. Corn, Soybeans Lower in Overnight Trading Corn and soybean futures were lower overnight amid lofty production expectations and favorable weather conditions in the U.S.  The Department of Agriculture last month forecast domestic corn production in the 2025/2026 marketing year that started on Sept. 1 at 16.742 billion bushels on yield of 188.8 bushels an acre. Both would be records if realized.  That’d be up from the previous year’s output of 14.867 billion bushels on yield of 179.3 bushels an acre, USDA data shows.  Ending stocks are expected to jump to 2.117 billion bushels in the current marketing year from…

By Joe Janzen, Scott Irwin, and Yu-Chi Wang In the past five years, the renewable diesel boom has spurred new demand for soybean oil as a feedstock in production of biofuels. Soybean processors can respond to higher demand like this in multiple ways. Most obviously, they can crush more soybeans to produce more soybean oil. The downside to more crushing activity is more soybean meal, the other main product of the soybean crushing process. A lack of demand for this additional soybean meal may hurt soybean processing margins and keep soybean prices lower than they otherwise would be. Irwin and…

The Farmers’ Almanac — not to be confused with the similarly titled Old Farmer’s Almanac — has released its long-range forecast for the winter of 2025-26. According to the folks there, the theme for the season is clear: “Chill, Snow, Repeat.” For farmers, ranchers, and rural communities across the country, that means it’s time to prepare for a winter marked by dramatic swings and widespread wintry weather. Although the season officially begins with the winter solstice on December 21, 2025, the almanac warns that cold and snow could arrive much earlier in certain regions, with some areas expected to feel…

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins unveiled her policy aimed at addressing rural veterinarian shortages this week. “In many rural areas, there simply aren’t enough food animal veterinarians, leaving livestock without timely access to preventive care and vulnerable to dangerous diseases that can wipe out herds and flocks,” wrote David Schmitt, former Iowa state veterinarian, in an Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine blog post. Rollins’ op-ed column published below highlights the challenges faced by food animal veterinarians, particularly in rural areas, and briefly describes solutions that USDA will pursue. The department shared a more detailed policy plan to help fill…

The MAHA Commission has publicly released its long-awaited Strategy Report, aimed at tackling the “crisis” of chronic illnesses facing our children. It compliments the MAHA Assessment published in May 2025, which identified four major causes of the crisis: poor diet, chemical exposures, lack of physical activity and stress, and overmedicalization. (You’ll recall that that report contained several fake citations written with the help of a generative AI platform like ChatGPT.) The main strategies discussed in this newly released followup document by the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-led commission align around four areas that sound pretty reasonable: advance research, realign incentives and…

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — On Sept. 11, 2001, Linda Keller was living with her husband at a B-1 bomber base in South Dakota, where he was serving in the Air Force. She watched on television, stunned, as planes struck the World Trade Center towers. Moments later, her husband’s phone rang. He was ordered to report to the command center immediately. School was canceled. The base went into lockdown. “When we heard about Flight 93 going down in western Pennsylvania — which is home for me and my husband — chills and panic went through me,” Keller said. “The phone system…