BARN TALK
The Unfiltered Voice of Rural America
Issue #019 · August 5, 2026
|
|
|
Hey folks, the data center fight stopped being a city council problem this week. A farm bureau with 24,000 members went on record against the whole build-out, and the reason is a power line that wants to cross ground taxpayers already paid to protect. Diesel is the other story, and crude coming down did nothing for it.
In this issue
| Farmers voted no. a 24,000-member farm bureau just backed a statewide data center moratorium |
| Diesel is $5.31. and the refinery is the reason, not the oil field |
| The border reopens. Mexican feeder cattle start crossing again on August 24 |
| Farm bill markup Thursday. with a fuel fight already broken out over it |
| New poll. we want to know what you actually do for a living |
|
This Week's Episode
Watch on YouTube · Listen on Spotify · or keep scrolling to read it.
|
|
|
|
Live Event Countdown
We're at 3,093 of 10,000 subscribers. Help us get there.
Hit 10,000 and we throw a live event at the barn. Subscribers get first crack at tickets.
|
|
FARM COUNTRY JUST DREW A LINE ON DATA CENTERS
One proposed line in Pennsylvania would cross six or more farms the public already paid to preserve.
On July 31 the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau board voted unanimously to endorse a statewide moratorium on new AI data center development. That is a 24,000-member farm organization, not a protest group, and they did not put an end date on the request. What pushed them there was not the buildings.
It is the wire, not the warehouse
PPL Electric Utilities has floated five possible routes for a new high-voltage line that looks built to feed one proposed data center site. At least one of those routes runs across six or more farms in Union County that are permanently preserved, ground where the public already bought the development rights. PPL has said eminent domain is an option for getting access. So your tax dollars kept that dirt in farming, and a utility can still run steel through it.
One county being difficult, this is not
North Carolina has at least 29 counties and towns with moratoriums on the books, and Farmville shut one project down for a year after the meetings got loud. DeSoto County, Florida passed one unanimously in late July. Pennsylvania's Senate has advanced a bill letting local governments pause projects for 18 months. In the first quarter alone, local opposition tied up 75 projects worth about $130 billion.
|
From the Barn
We are not anti data center around here. Somebody has to build the power and the compute, and this country is short on both. What gets us is who ends up carrying it. Your county supervisor used to be a retired farmer who knew which bridges needed fixed. That seat is worth real money to somebody now, and nobody in that room is signing an NDA on your behalf.
|
|
|
DIESEL HIT $5.31 AND CHEAPER CRUDE DID NOT SAVE YOU
On-highway diesel averaged $5.313 a gallon on July 27, up almost 18 cents in one week and up a dollar and a half from a year ago. The Midwest sat at $5.196. Then crude turned around and fell. September crude closed Tuesday at $75.77, about three and a half dollars under the week before, and the pump did not follow it down.
That gap is a refining problem. The diesel crack spread set a record at $93.44 a barrel, which is the market paying refiners whatever they want for the one product nobody has enough of. Global refinery runs in June were still six million barrels a day under last year. Distillate stocks here are running about 10 percent below the five-year seasonal average while demand climbs.
By the numbers
| Up roughly 40 percent on the year, national average, and the Midwest is up about a dollar forty |
| $15,080 more for 10,000 gallons of harvest fuel than the same gallons cost you last fall |
| $75,400 more if you burn 50,000, and that is before one bushel gets hauled anywhere |
A ceasefire does not restart a refinery
The Strait of Hormuz still is not moving the way it did, and the President said this week Iran is down to its last chance to negotiate it open. Even if that lands tomorrow, the refining capacity that went offline does not come back because somebody signed a paper. You are booking fall fuel against a problem that outlives the headline.
|
From the Barn
I filled the diesel barrel and then called FS to ask how much I have to commit to before they will price the next fill. That is where we are at. If you have not booked LP for the fall, quit reading and go do it, because the fella who booked in June is going to look like a genius by October and it will not be because he is smart.
|
|
|
|
Partner With Us
Want to reach rural America?
Barn Talk goes out to farmers, ranchers, and working folks who actually buy things. If that sounds like your customer, let's talk.
[email protected] →
|
|
This week's numbers
|
Corn (Sep '26)
$4.42 1/4 /bu
▼ $0.16 1/4 on the week
|
|
Soybeans (Aug '26)
$11.55 /bu
▼ $0.57 on the week
|
|
|
Chicago Wheat (Sep '26)
$6.38 1/2 /bu
▼ $0.24 on the week
|
|
Live Cattle (Aug '26)
$231.95 /cwt
▲ $4.48 on the week
|
|
|
Lean Hogs (Aug '26)
$97.85 /cwt
▼ $5.25 on the week
|
|
Crude Oil (Sep '26)
$75.77 /bbl
▼ $3.49 on the week
|
Tork's Picks
|
Bitcoin
$63,500 USD
Flat on the week
|
|
Tesla (TSLA)
$327.35 /share
▲ $19.91 on the week
|
This isn't financial advice. I'm just a farmer with an opinion.
|
Tork's Take
Grain took it on the chin. Corn gave up 16 cents and beans lost 57, and on August 12 USDA finally surveys actual farmers on this year's yield. If that number comes in fat, there is not much holding these prices up. Cattle went the other direction and picked up four and a half dollars. So the fella with calves is having a better summer than the fella with a combine. If you are both, you already knew that. Get something priced on whatever rally you get before the 12th.
|
|
|
|
A conversation we had in the barn a while back keeps coming back to me, and it started with AI agents. Sounds like a tech problem until somebody explains what one actually does. It does not hand you an answer and leave the work sitting there. It goes and finishes the job.
The farm version is not complicated. An agent that pulls every local bid plus the two or three things actually moving the market that morning, sitting in your inbox before you get to the shop. Or one that takes years of average daily gain and feed efficiency and tells you what your spreadsheets have been hiding. Dad and I have that data on our operation right now. Nobody has ever had a free afternoon to go read it.
“Take a risk and own something, because the owners are the ones who get to control their destiny.” |
Which is the same argument as ownership, really. Every version of the future anybody is selling right now treats owners differently than it treats everybody else. If the prosperous robot world shows up, fine, owners still do all right. If it does not show up, owners still have the thing they own. Land, a business, a truck and trailer with your name on the title. Pick one.
I am not telling you to bet the place on it. Do not lose your nut. But if you have been holding out for the clean, obvious, low-risk moment to buy in, that moment is not coming, and the people waiting on it will spend the next twenty years living with whatever gets handed to them.
If you are trying to figure out where to start, hit reply and tell me about it. I read every one.
|
|
Four things that caught our eye
| 01 |
Mexican cattle are coming back across the borderUSDA said on July 24 that Douglas, Arizona reopens to cattle trade August 24, with two New Mexico ports behind it. That ends a 15-month shutdown over New World screwworm, and eventually it means up to 80,000 head a month. Feeders are near record money, so this is going to make somebody hot. |
|
| 02 |
Rural families are paying the rent with grocery moneyA University of Wisconsin study published July 23 found households under $35,000 a year carrying housing stress between 68 and 96 percent, and in poor rural counties folks cover the house payment first and eat whatever keeps longest. Ramen at a dollar fifty feeds a family on paper and nowhere else. |
|
| 03 |
A farm bill actually reaches a markupSenate Ag takes up Boozman's revised bill Thursday with permanent year-round E15 written into it. Farm Bureau wants it moved. The American Petroleum Institute came out against it this week over how the bill treats small refinery exemptions. Watch which one of them blinks first. |
|
| 04 |
Wisconsin put $30 million into the bridges nobody mentionsMore than 100 communities got money August 1 for rural bridges and culverts, the little structures a loaded grain truck either crosses or goes around. That is 221 projects in 64 of the state's 72 counties now. Unglamorous, and worth more than half the programs that get a press conference. |
|
|
|
Barn Talk Poll
Where do you land?
We want to get to know you guys better. What do you do?
| A. Full-time farmer |
|
B. Full-time rancher |
|
| C. Both |
|
D. Part-time or aspiring |
|
|
Did You Know?
The United States exports about 20 percent of everything it produces on the farm by value. Roughly one row in five is grown for somebody else's supper table, which is why a trade argument in a country you will never visit turns up in your basis.
|
|
Word of the Week
| GREEN-CHOP |
Forage cut and hauled straight to the animals the same day instead of being dried into hay or packed as silage. Cheap feed when the pasture quits on you in August, and a fast way to founder something if you get careless with the load. |
|
|
|
|
Two things worth watching before we talk again. The farm bill markup Thursday, and the USDA yield survey on the 12th. One sets policy for years, the other sets what your crop is worth this fall, and neither asks you first.
We'll see you in the barn.
Sawyer & Tork
Hosts, Barn Talk · joinbarntalk.com
|
|
Know someone who needs this?
Help us reach 10,000 and earn your spot at the live event.
Read online · © 2026 Barn Talk · joinbarntalk.com
|
|
