Field Posts

Though cattlemen are still in a good marketing position compared to years past, the last two weeks have seen enough price instability to make any rancher feel sick to their stomach. With competing headlines around whether or not the Southern border will remain closed due to the threat of New World Screwworm, and unwelcome moves by the Trump administration to potentially increase beef imports from...

Since 2005, DTN Progressive Farmer has been selecting two farmers from across the country to participate in the annual View from the Cab project.  These farmers spend a full year getting to know DTN’s Pamela Smith through weekly calls and check-ins, sharing their stories and their seasons with the broader farm community.  Today, we’re sitting down with one of the 2025 View from the Cab farmers, St...

The New World Screwworm has been uncommon in the U.S. since the 1960s, but plenty of ranchers, especially those in the Southwest, still remember how devastating a problem it can be.  The larval maggots of the screwworm feed exclusively on living flesh, and an infested animal can succumb in a matter of days. So evidence that the pest is moving Northward from Southern Mexico is a key concern for Ame...

Farming in America today is an expensive endeavor. Even as commodity prices continue to slump ahead of a record big crop, farmers are already having to make decisions about purchases for next year’s crop. There are many hard conversations with lenders, agronomists, and family members ahead, with questions about how to finance land deals, equipment purchases, and seed and crop protection needs weig...

The U.S. federal government began a partial shutdown starting Wednesday October 1st, disrupting services and efforts across sprawling agencies — though workers deemed essential remain on the job without pay.  Farmers and the agricultural industry writ large have been affected, from delays at local FSA offices to lost momentum on trade deals to missed national reports. DTN Ag Policy Editor Chris Cl...

The battle for year round E15 is not new, but in the last several weeks, it has become increasingly urgent.  Though lawmakers have expressed support again and again for expanded rules that would create additional demand for ethanol around the country, farmers and their advocates continue to wait for changes, and now with a gigantic corn crop about to flood the market, and hamstring prices, any bit...

DTN Ag Policy Editor Chris Clayton has had his hands full for months, tracking a wide range of stories from Washington that promise to impact farmers and ranchers in myriad ways. For one, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is still in the midst of a proposed reorganization, which is leaving local FSA offices short on staff — and farmers are starting to raise their concerns. Our conversation today...

The September WASDE dropped Friday, Sept. 12, bringing relief to many as USDA announced that the record 188 bushel/acre yield estimate for corn they’d published in August had been cut more than two bushels per acre — amounting to a reduction of millions of bushels of anticipated supply. However, USDA’s report also announced an unprecedented update to acre figures, which meant that lower bushel per...

As another year’s wheat harvest draws to a close, the country’s most progressive farmers are getting ready to submit their crop data to the National Wheat Foundation’s annual Wheat Yield Contest.  Anne Osborne, Executive Director of the National Wheat Foundation, and her team are preparing to review submissions and crown a new year of bin-busters and quality leaders, but took a break for her prepa...

For the usual big names at this year’s Farm Progress show, size and expanding autonomy were the name of the game. Despite the tricky market conditions going into the show, with farmer equipment purchases down double-digits as compared to last year, companies still showed up and showed off their latest and greatest, displaying new tools aimed at improving productivity and reducing labor needs. Fres...

The ideal 2025 growing season is giving way to the dog days of August, as farmers finally start to see the hot and dry conditions that were expected months ago. With harvest in sight, the rise in temperatures and lack of precipitation is putting a damper on a brilliant season, but also promises to ease harvest, even as it hints at a longer range forecast that’ll impact farmers in the U.S. and arou...

In the middle of the 2025 DTN Digital Yield Tour, the U.S. Department of Agriculture dropped a bombshell — predicting a record-breaking corn crop in the August WASDE. As the fallout continued throughout the week DTN data scientists, analysts, and reporters were keeping up with the latest data coming not from USDA but directly from the field, just as beans are starting to fill and corn enters its f...

The August WASDE dropped Aug. 12, stunning the market with a nearly 17 billion bushel corn crop prediction — shattering the previous record. The eye-popping number was helped along by a 188 bushel per acre yield estimate and an additional 2.1 million planted acres over the July figure. This news comes as a summer that was expected to be hot and dry remained persistently mild, and farmers across th...

Mud and mosquitos were plentiful on this year’s Wheat Quality Council Spring Wheat tour, which brings together dozens of industry officials to travel the highways and byways of the Northern Great Plains in order to get a boots-on-the-ground perspective on this year’s crop. After collecting yield estimates from hundreds of fields, and taking a closer look at hundreds more from the road, the results...

Despite the investment that many farmers make into crop insurance products, some policies in some parts of the country simply don’t pay out. As farmers look ahead to increasingly difficult conditions and no real prospect of improved indemnification, many are on the hunt for alternatives to conventional insurance products that are better built for unique and changing conditions in agriculture. Toda...

Agriculture news has gone mainstream in a big way recently, and few farmers are happy about it. Immigration raids on farms, especially those in California and elsewhere along the U.S.’s southern border, have been growing as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials become a more and more constant presence on the road and in the field. And even farmers whose workers are hired through the H2-A p...

The July WASDE dropped Friday, July 11th, coming fast on the heels of USDA’s big June 30th update for planted acres, grain stocks, and more. Those latest figures updated the balance sheet, and when combined with the USDA’s new expectations for domestic and global demand, there were at least a few fireworks lighting up the market in the days after.  To help us drink from this firehose of recent new...

Finding good help on the farm is an age-old problem, but in recent months and years, the difficulty seems to have risen exponentially. Between the struggle of an aging rural workforce, the new pressures introduced by COVID, and the gaps and expenses of federal programs like H-2A, the challenges are piling up, while meaningful solutions remain thin on the ground.  The DTN team is no stranger to thi...

The 90-day window that the Trump Administration created in order to negotiate new trade deals with over 200 countries comes to a close on July 9th.  The goal for this time period was to create pressure and opportunities for America’s many and diverse trading partners to come to the table, propose strategies to reduce trade deficits, and offer more favorable treatment for American businesses and pr...

An unprecedented era in U.S. cattle markets continues as what was supposed to be a hot and dry summer looks wetter and more temperate than anyone expected.  In light of that, the idea of record cattle prices is increasingly becoming standard fare, as market fundamentals like herd size remain at historic levels. DTN’s recent Ag Summit Series event on the Future of the Cowherd dug into the weather,...

For anyone who’s been hoping for a surprise to boost markets recently, good news came from an unexpected place earlier this month.  After months and months of delay, and multiple anonymous sources suggesting that biofuel levels were set to disappoint the industry, the actual numbers announced by EPA stunned watchers with a proposed 2 billion gallon jump up in the biomass based diesel requirements....

The June WASDE dropped Thursday, June 12, in the midst of a wild period of domestic and global news about everything from newly released biofuel commitments to the latest on the emerging conflict in the Middle East. There’s a lot to keep track of as the USDA aims to evaluate the old and new crops in the U.S. and around the world, and give producers a thoughtful look at what might come next — over...

Whether you’re thinking about weather, markets, trade or farm bill policy, the last several months have been characterized by one thing — chaos. It seems to be impossible to stay up with the sheer quantity of news, updates, and announcements coming from every direction, which are continuously changing the outlook for the year ahead.  Today, we wanted to take some time to talk through some time-tes...

Just a few months ago, meteorologists at DTN and beyond were expressing concern about wide swaths of drought across key U.S. growing reasons, and the likelihood of a hot and dry summer set to exacerbate the situation. Now, after an unexpectedly wet and temperate start to the season, substantial drought is largely gone and conditions look good for the summer. But changes may still be on the horizon...

Every year for more than six decades, the Wheat Quality Council has sponsored a Winter Wheat Tour that criss-crosses the state of Kansas to get a mid-season update on what conditions look like in the field and what farmers, millers, and everyone in between might be able to expect from the annual crop. This year was no exception, and DTN Crops Editor Jason Jenkins is just back from three high impac...