BARN TALK
The Unfiltered Voice of Rural America
Issue #023 · September 4, 2026
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Hey folks, a federal judge just told the Labor Department the way it cut H-2A farm wages was illegal, and the fix will take months. If you hire that labor, you cannot price your own season. Beans put on 47 cents, crude ran up nine bucks, and the Panama Canal starts turning ships away today.
In this issue
| A judge voided the farm wage rule and growers cannot price the season |
| Panama caps transits at 34 a day starting today, 32 by mid-month |
| ARC and PLC checks should top $13.5 billion in October |
| EPA granted 18 full refinery waivers over corn country's objections |
| A Norwegian in Kansas City wants to sell you a collar instead of a fence |
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A JUDGE KILLED THE FARM WAGE CUT AND LEFT GROWERS THE BILL
Washington state's H-2A rate went from $19.82 an hour in 2024 to $17.13 under the voided rule.
On August 27 a federal judge in California ruled the Labor Department broke the law rewriting how H-2A farm wages get set. Judge Kirk Sherriff called three of the four challenged pieces arbitrary and capricious, and found no good reason the agency skipped public comment on most of it.
Follow the money
The number is the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, the floor an employer must pay a guest worker so imported labor cannot undercut an American doing the same job. The October 2025 rewrite dropped that floor by up to $7 an hour depending on the state. Labor's own math put it at $2.5 billion a year moving off paychecks and onto balance sheets.
A do-over with no price tag
The ugly part lands on whoever signs the checks. Sherriff left current wages in place while Labor writes a new formula, and would not rule on back pay until those numbers exist. So a grower can pay a rate the court called illegal and learn next spring he owes a year of it. The National Council of Agricultural Employers says farmers may not know their 2026 labor costs for months.
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From the Barn
Both sides are right, which is the whole problem. A guest worker got his pay cut by an agency that never ran it past anybody, and the grower who followed the rule carries the risk. A bad rule written fast, ten months to undo, and the only two people who eat the cost are the guy on the ladder and the guy who owns the ladder. Write the number into law and quit letting it swing every four years.
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THE PANAMA CANAL STARTS TURNING SHIPS AWAY TODAY
The Panama Canal Authority cut its daily transit slots effective today under advisories A-28 and A-29, and cuts again September 15. Nine slots are the big Neopanamax locks. The rest are Panamax, the class most dry bulk grain boats run, and that is what is getting squeezed.
The reason is water, and forecasters have El Nino hanging around into 2027, so nobody treats it as a one-month problem. The authority has been walking draft limits down too, which means a boat can clear the lock and still not load full.
By the numbers
| 34 transits a day from today, down from 36, and 32 from September 15. Panamax slots go 25 to 23. |
| 34 percent short on rain across the canal watershed May through August, with inflows 44 percent below average. |
| Second time ever the canal has capped daily transits. The last round pushed Gulf grain onto longer routes. |
Why you care in Iowa
Corn and beans leaving the Gulf for Asia go through that ditch. Squeeze the slots and a boat waits on a reservation or runs the long way, and the freight comes out of what an exporter can bid the elevator. It reaches you as basis. No headline will say the canal took eight cents off your bid, but that is the mechanism, and it lands as the combines roll.
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From the Barn
We built an export program on a fifty-mile shortcut that depends on it raining in Panama. Nobody in Washington will fix the weather, but they could quit treating the river system and the rail out of here like somebody else's problem. Ask your congressman what the plan is for the week the shortcut closes.
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This week's numbers
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Corn (Sep '26)
$5.18 3/4 /bu
▲ $0.04 3/4 on the week
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Soybeans (Sep '26)
$13.01 3/4 /bu
▲ $0.47 1/2 on the week
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Chicago Wheat (Sep '26)
$7.54 3/4 /bu
▲ $0.24 1/4 on the week
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Live Cattle (Oct '26)
$210.18 /cwt
▼ $8.30 on the week
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Lean Hogs (Oct '26)
$83.78 /cwt
▲ $2.88 on the week
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Crude Oil (Oct '26)
$91.01 /bbl
▲ $8.78 on the week
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Tork's Picks
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Bitcoin
$77,300 USD
▼ $1,727 on the week
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Deere (DE)
$698.37 /share
▲ $63.83 on the week
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This isn't financial advice. I'm just a farmer with an opinion.
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Tork's Take
Beans up forty-seven and a half cents in a week is a gift, so look hard at what you can price off the combine. Cattle gave back $8.30 on the October contract after that run, which tells you the trade got ahead of itself and not that the herd got bigger. Crude up almost nine dollars is the one that ought to worry you, because that is your fall fuel bill and next year's nitrogen in the same number. Deere at an all-time high says somebody believes grain prices pull equipment demand back. Beans sold and diesel booked, you had a good week. Neither one, go make a phone call.
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Every so often somebody sits down in the barn and puts a problem you have lived with your whole life into words you have never heard. That was a Norwegian named Oliver, who moved his young family from Europe to Kansas City to sell American ranchers a collar instead of a fence.
The company is called Monil, necklace in Latin. You put a GPS collar on every head and draw a boundary on your phone. When she walks up to that line the collar makes a noise that climbs until she turns around, and if she keeps going she gets a pop Oliver says is milder than a hot wire. What you own then is a fence you can move from a truck seat at midnight, a hundred miles away.
“If we start treating the animals and the farmers like just a data point, I think you're properly screwed up.” |
That came out when I asked about the big money in his category. Halter, the two-billion-dollar player, tells the market it is an AI and robotics company that happens to work in cattle. Oliver was more honest than I expected. He said talking that way is how you get Silicon Valley to write checks, and the checks fund tools a rancher can use.
Then came the part that stuck. If a company like his ever sees the animal and the man who owns her as an anonymous line in a dashboard, the whole thing is broken no matter how good the hardware gets. Strange thing to hear from a guy selling a computer for a cow's neck, and it is why I take his call.
If you have run virtual fence, I want to know whether it held. Hit reply, I read every one.
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Four things that caught our eye
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ARC and PLC checks land in OctoberA USDA official said September 2 that 2025 crop year payments start moving after October 1, on schedule. USDA and outside analysts both put the total north of $13.5 billion, because the One Big Beautiful Bill Act raised the limit to $155,000 per commodity. For 2025 only you get the better of ARC or PLC whichever you elected. Do not build a 2027 budget on it. |
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| 02 |
EPA handed refiners 18 full waivers for 2025On August 31 EPA ruled on 34 small refinery exemption petitions for 2025. Eighteen got a full pass, eleven got half, three were denied, two were ineligible. Iowa, South Dakota and Missouri's attorneys general had told EPA to reject broad waivers, citing refinery earnings that do not look like hardship. Every gallon waived is ethanol demand that stops existing, and it lands on the corn bid. |
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| 03 |
Your county conservation office may be emptyInvestigate Midwest reported September 2 on a National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition analysis: Illinois lost 77 NRCS positions from January 2025 to January 2026. Nearly half the counties in the state lost conservation staff, and four lost every one they had. EQIP contracts fell 38 percent and CSP fell 21 percent from 2024 to 2025. Those are the people who walk your ground and do your paperwork. |
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| 04 |
A town lost its only grocery and is talking about building its ownThe Daily Yonder went back to Shoals, Indiana on August 28, a year after Kroger shut the JayC that was the only grocery in town. People drive 16 miles round trip to Loogootee, or buy what the Dollar General stocks. Farm and business leaders started a Tuesday pop-up, the Shoals Grocery Grab, in a restaurant lot, and the talk has turned to a community-owned store. |
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Barn Talk Poll
Where do you land?
Where do you live?
| A. Out in the country |
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B. Small town |
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| C. Mid-size town |
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D. City or suburbs |
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Did You Know?
America's electric cooperatives cover about 56 percent of the nation's landmass and own roughly 42 percent of its distribution lines, but serve only about 12 percent of the population. Same poles, same wire, same ice storms, a lot fewer meters to spread it across.
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Word of the Week
| BLACK LAYER |
The thin dark line at the base of a corn kernel that shows up when the plant quits pushing sugar in. Once it is there the crop is done making yield, and everything after that is drying down, not growing. |
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Odd one to land on a Friday, and we are back on the regular day next time. Between a wage rule nobody can price and a canal out of water, most of what moved your bottom line happened somewhere you have never set foot. Go get the crop out.
We'll see you in the barn.
Sawyer & Tork
Hosts, Barn Talk · joinbarntalk.com
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Read online · © 2026 Barn Talk · joinbarntalk.com · This week's episode: #EP215
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