BARN TALK
The Unfiltered Voice of Rural America
Weekly Newsletter · Issue #015 · July 8, 2026
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Hey folks, Washington managed to do two things this week that put money back in your pocket instead of pulling it out, and we are still trying to figure out what got into them. Meanwhile it is hot enough across the Corn Belt to fry an egg on your tailgate, cattle finally came off the boil, and diesel got cheaper for the first time in a while. Grab a cold one and let us get into it.
This Week
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Trump killed the import duty on phosphate, and your fertilizer bill just caught a break
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The biofuel feedstock rule got finalized, and there is real money in it if your acres qualify
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Live cattle dropped eight bucks off the recent highs while hogs and grain ticked up
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Record heat is baking the middle of the country heading into the second week of July
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Sawyer on cover crops, stubborn dads, and the fight between good dirt and a paid bill
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The Phosphate Duty Is Gone And Your Input Bill Finally Caught A Break
On June 29, President Trump signed a proclamation temporarily suspending the countervailing duties on certain phosphate fertilizer imports. If your eyes glazed over reading that, here is the plain version. One of the taxes that has been quietly padding your fertilizer bill for the last four years just got switched off, and it happened right as you start pricing fall inputs.
Why This Actually Moves The Needle
Phosphate is one of the three nutrients you cannot farm without, and DAP and MAP prices have been running hot ever since the 2021 trade case slapped duties on imports from Morocco and Russia. Those duties choked off a chunk of foreign supply and handed domestic producers room to hold prices up. You paid the difference every fall. Turning the duty off opens the door for cheaper imported product to compete again, and that pressure tends to show up at the retail level right when demand is heaviest.
The Catch
It is temporary, so do not build a three-year plan on it. The domestic phosphate crowd will fight to get the duty back, and global supply is tight anyway with China still sitting on its export limits. The relief could be real and it could also be modest and short. Watch your local retail price, and if it drops, book what you need for fall instead of waiting for the bottom that may not come.
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From the Barn
For four years they told you this duty was protecting American jobs while you were the one eating the freight. Now they yanked it because the inflation math finally landed on somebody important's desk. Take the break, put it in the budget, and do not count on it surviving past the next time the domestic guys write a check to a lobbyist.
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The Biofuel Rule Nobody Explained Could Be Worth $40 An Acre
Late last month the USDA finalized the technical guidelines for biofuel feedstocks tied to the 45Z clean fuel credit. It is buried in carbon-intensity math that would put a fence post to sleep, but the takeaway is simple. The corn and beans you grow for ethanol and biodiesel now score better on that math, and a piece of that value can flow back to the farm gate.
Here is how the money actually moves. The ethanol or biodiesel plant claims the credit, your grain earns it a lower carbon score, and in a competitive market that plant hands part of the value back as basis or a per-acre payment to keep your bushels coming. Early reads on the rule put a real number on it.
What The Numbers Look Like
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Around $40 an acre in added value with no change to how you farm, according to early calculations on the rule
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Up to roughly $100 an acre for growers sitting near an ethanol plant set up to capture the credit
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Zero required practice change to qualify at the baseline, which is the part that caught everybody off guard
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What To Watch
The catch is that it only pays if your local plant actually claims the credit and passes value back to you instead of pocketing it. Call your elevator and your ethanol plant and ask where they stand before you pencil this into next year's projection. The dollars are real, but they are not automatic.
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From the Barn
Washington spent years making you document your carbon footprint like you were on trial for it. Now that same paperwork might pay you 40 bucks an acre for farming the exact way you already do. Take the win, read the contract twice, and do not let the plant quietly keep the share that belongs to your bushels.
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Tork's Market Update
What the numbers mean for you
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This Week's Numbers
Prices as of market close · July 2, 2026 · Courtesy of katsgrain.com
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Corn (Jul '26)
$4.25 /bu
▲ $0.12 on the week
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Soybeans (Jul '26)
$11.31 3/4 /bu
▲ $0.06 on the week
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Chicago Wheat (Jul '26)
$5.90 1/2 /bu
▲ $0.12 on the week
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Live Cattle (Aug '26)
$239.23 /cwt
▼ $8.00 on the week
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Lean Hogs (Jul '26)
$93.85 /cwt
▲ $1.15 on the week
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Crude Oil (Aug '26)
$68.69 /bbl
▼ $3.17 on the week
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Tork's Picks
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Bitcoin
$60,180 USD
▲ $2,180 on the week
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Tesla (TSLA)
$391.25 /share
▲ $16.10 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
Cattle finally took a breather. Down eight bucks on the week after chasing records all spring, and if you have been sitting on fat cattle waiting for the top, understand the easy money up there is probably behind us for now. The grains caught a weather bid with corn, beans, and wheat all green, but a twelve cent corn rally on a hot forecast is not a trend, so do not fall in love with it. The real gift this week is crude down more than three dollars a barrel. That is your diesel bill getting cheaper right when you are running hard in the heat, so take it. Bitcoin bounced off its floor, and Tesla finished the week green even after getting hammered the day it posted record deliveries, which tells you the market quit caring how many they build and started asking whether they make a dime doing it.
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Sawyer's Spotlight
The younger generation's take, straight from the barn
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Every so often somebody sits down across from us in the barn and says the quiet part out loud. This time it was a farm kid out of central Iowa who built a whole following just by being herself online. Somewhere between the jokes she got going on cover crops and soil conservation, and that part of the conversation has been rattling around in my head ever since.
Her dad is a boomer who will tell you cover crops do not work, that they dry the ground out, end of discussion. She went off to Iowa State, fell in love with soil health and water quality, and came home with a different opinion. Now it is the one subject they cannot get through a meal without it turning into a knock-down drag-out. If you farm with your family, you know exactly the fight I am talking about, because every operation has that one topic nobody brings up over dinner.
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“Most of us want to do right by the dirt, because we want to hand it to our kids someday. The hard part is the dirt does not pay this month's bills.”
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That is the whole thing right there. Nobody I know wants to wreck their ground. We want to pass it on better than we got it. But yield is what keeps you in business, and if you are not making money you lose the ground, and then you cannot do right by it either way. This was never about hippies versus conventional, it is about finding the middle where the soil gets healthier and the operation still cash flows.
What gives me hope is that my generation is actually listening. Cover crops, no-till, keeping something living in the ground over winter, none of that is fringe talk anymore. You do not have to bet the whole farm on it either. Try it on your worst forty, keep honest records, and let the ground show you what it does. Your dad can argue with the dirt, but he cannot argue with the yield map.
You running any cover crops, or is that still a fighting word at your dinner table? Hit reply and tell me how it is going. I read every one.
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4 Things That Caught Our Eye This Week
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01
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Record heat is cooking the Corn Belt into the second week of July
A dome of record heat parked over the middle of the country into the July 4 weekend, with roughly 175 million people under advisories and the Corn Belt sitting right in the worst of it. NOAA's outlook keeps temperatures above normal through July 14. Corn trying to pollinate in heat like this is the kind of thing that quietly shaves a yield before anybody wants to admit it.
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02
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USDA rolled out a new program to prop up small beef processors
On June 30 the USDA announced the Strengthening Processing for U.S. Ranchers program, or SPUR, offering temporary support to eligible beef plants. The whole point is more places to get cattle killed and cut that are not owned by the big four packers. We will believe it moves the needle when the checks clear, but more processing competition is the right idea for producers who are tired of being price takers.
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03
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Canada is planting more beans, and that matters for your price
Statistics Canada pegged 2026 Canadian soybean acres up about 3 percent, with canola higher too. More acres north of the border means more supply chasing the same buyers. It is a small number on its own, but stack it on top of a big South American crop and it is one more reason beans have a ceiling over their head right now.
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04
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Dairy farms finally got a straight answer on guest workers
New guidance from Homeland Security and the Labor Department cleared the way for dairy operations to use the H-2A visa program, which was built for seasonal work and never fit a barn that milks 365 days a year. Dairies have been stuck for years with no legal labor lane that made sense. It is paperwork, not a cure, but it is the first crack of daylight they have had in a long time.
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Before You Go
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Barn Talk Trivia
Think You Know Your Stuff?
This Week's Question
John Deere's old two-cylinder tractors earned a lasting nickname from the distinctive sound they made. What was it?
| A Green Machines |
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B Johnny Poppers |
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| C Prairie Ponies |
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D Iron Horses |
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Did You Know?
Farmers take home only about 15 cents of every dollar Americans spend on food. The other 85 cents gets swallowed up by processing, packaging, trucking, and the store shelf. Next time somebody blames the farmer for grocery prices, you can tell them where the money actually goes.
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Barn Talk Word of the Week
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MILLWRIGHT
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A specialized tradesman who installs, levels, and repairs the heavy machinery that keeps a place running, from the grain elevator and the feed mill to the packing line. When the equipment that moves your crop grinds to a halt, the millwright is who gets it turning again.
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That is the week. Washington threw a couple of bones your way, the heat is doing its worst, and the ground under your boots is still the only thing that pays you back when you treat it right. Do us a favor and forward this to somebody who would get it.
We'll see you in the barn.
Sawyer & Tork
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© 2026 Barn Talk · joinbarntalk.com · This week's episode: EP209
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