BARN TALK
The Unfiltered Voice of Rural America
Weekly Newsletter · Issue #4 · April 22, 2026
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Hey folks. Planting season is getting started about as rough as the markets have been. Tariff uncertainty has guys second-guessing their corn acres, cattle are running at historic highs while the row crop guys are just trying to keep the lights on, and we sat down with a Wisconsin farmer who turned a roller mill accident at sixteen into an eighteen-year career helping injured farmers keep farming. A lot to get into this week.
This Week
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Tariff pressure is hitting planting decisions at the worst possible time
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Live cattle at $251/cwt and still climbing
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USDA pegs 2026 corn acres at 95.3 million as a wet spring slows planting
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Jeff Crotwell on the program keeping injured farmers on their operations
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Tork's market rundown: corn and beans up, wheat down, Bitcoin through $74,000
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TARIFF CHAOS IS HITTING THE PLANTING CALENDAR WHEN FARMERS CAN LEAST AFFORD IT
Farmers are heading into the 2026 planting season with the same unanswered question hanging over every acre decision they make: what happens to demand if this trade situation gets worse. With reciprocal tariffs still in flux and U.S. export negotiations with major corn and soybean buyers still unsettled, growers are pricing in risk they can't quantify yet. That's not a comfortable position when you're writing seed contracts and locking in inputs.
What the Numbers Show
The USDA's April WASDE put 2026 corn planting estimates at 95.3 million acres, a figure that assumes normal planting progress. As of mid-April, only 1% of corn had been planted across the Corn Belt, well behind the five-year average, after a wet and cold spring kept equipment out of fields across Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. Soybean planting is similarly delayed. If weather cooperates through May, the crop can be made. If it doesn't, producers are looking at replant costs and yield penalties on top of an already uncertain price outlook. Source: USDA WASDE Report, April 9, 2026.
The Trade Problem
The bigger concern isn't the weather. It's the export side. Retaliatory measures from trading partners in response to U.S. tariff policy have created uncertainty around demand for American corn and soybeans, particularly from buyers who have alternatives. China's soybean purchases from Brazil have been trending up for two years. If U.S. export demand softens further, the modest rally in corn and bean prices this week may not hold through summer. Most farmers are planting corn anyway because the crop has to go in. But a lot of them are doing it without a clear picture of where prices are headed by October. Source: DTN / Wisconsin Public Radio, April 2026.
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From the Barn
Every year I've farmed, there's been some kind of uncertainty going into planting. Weather, prices, inputs, trade deals. The only thing that changes is what you're uncertain about. You plant anyway. You make the best decision you can with what you know in February and you live with it in October. Farming has never been a sure thing and it isn't going to start being one now.
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CATTLE ARE HAVING THEIR BEST YEAR IN MEMORY WHILE ROW CROP GUYS ARE EATING SEED CORN
Live cattle futures touched $251 per hundredweight this week, near multi-year highs, and the operators running cattle are having one of the best profit years in recent memory. Feedlot margins remain solid, cow-calf producers are getting top dollar on feeder cattle sales, and demand for U.S. beef both domestically and on the export side remains strong.
Meanwhile, row crop farmers are entering their third consecutive year of compressed margins. Corn at $4.43 per bushel sounds better than it was six months ago, but when you stack it against input costs that haven't come down meaningfully since the 2022 run-up, a lot of operations are still running below breakeven on cash basis. Beans at $11.58 are moving in the right direction. Whether they move enough by harvest to turn a profit on this year's crop is a different conversation. Source: Brownfield Ag News, April 2026.
The Split That's Reshaping Operations
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Live cattle futures (Jun '26): $251.43/cwt, up $2.88 on the week and roughly 18% above their five-year average for this time of year
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Corn (May '26): $4.43/bu, up on the week but still below full-cost-of-production estimates for many Midwest operations carrying 2024 and 2025 input costs
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Row crop operations: third consecutive year of compressed margins, per Brownfield Ag News analysis, April 2026
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How Long Can the Split Hold
The cattle guys are having a year. But feedlot economics only work if fat cattle prices hold when feeder cattle prices are running as high as they are. At $251 on fat cattle, the math works. If that number pulls back while feeder prices stay elevated, the same operators celebrating today will be the ones getting squeezed in 2027. The row crop guys are watching the markets and hoping this is the year prices finally catch up to input costs. They've been watching since 2023.
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From the Barn
I don't want to be the guy who tells cattle operators to stop enjoying it. But I've been around long enough to see what happens when a market runs this good for this long and people start betting everything on it holding. Build your balance sheet while the getting's good. Don't let a great year become the foundation for a really bad decision.
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Tork's Market Update
What the numbers mean for the people actually in the field
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This Week's Numbers
Prices as of market close · April 15, 2026 · Courtesy of katsgrain.com
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Corn (May '26)
$4.43 /bu
▲ $0.04 on the week
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Soybeans (May '26)
$11.58 /bu
▲ $0.08 on the week
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Chicago Wheat (May '26)
$5.92 /bu
▼ $0.03 on the week
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Live Cattle (Jun '26)
$251.43 /cwt
▲ $2.88 on the week
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Lean Hogs (May '26)
$94.23 /cwt
▼ $0.63 on the week
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Crude Oil (May '26)
$91.28 /bbl
▲ $0.78 on the week
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Tork's Picks
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Bitcoin
$74,442 USD
▲ 8.1% on the week
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Tesla (TSLA) on UBS upgrade
$365.98 /share
▲ 3.8% on the week
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This ain't financial advice. I'm just a farmer with an opinion.
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Tork's Take
Corn and beans are moving in the right direction, which is nice, but nothing that's going to save anybody's year by itself. Wheat keeps doing what wheat does lately, which is go the wrong direction. Now cattle, that's still the story, and the question every feedlot guy has to be sitting with right now is whether fat cattle prices hold when you're paying that much for feeder cattle going in. So far they're holding. Hogs are sitting right where they've been. Crude is ticking up, which means your inputs aren't going anywhere cheap. Bitcoin broke through $74,000 and held this week on some geopolitical news. Tesla got itself a bank upgrade and caught a bounce. I'll take both.
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Sawyer's Spotlight
The younger generation's take, straight from the barn
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Every once in a while somebody sits down in the barn and tells a story that stays with you long after the mics come off. Jeff Crotwell is one of those. He manages the farm program at Easter Seals Wisconsin and has been doing it for eighteen years. Before that, he was a dairy farm kid in southwest Wisconsin who at sixteen years old got his right hand pulled into a roller mill while feeding cows at five in the morning. Lost two middle fingers. Partial loss on a third. The accident happened on November 11, 1993, and he still knows the exact date without having to think about it.
What I kept coming back to in the conversation was how fast it happens. Jeff couldn't even tell you exactly what went wrong. One second he was clearing the hopper like he'd done hundreds of times before, and the next second his hand was in the rollers. The machine doesn't give you time to think about whether you're doing something unsafe. By the time you know, it's already done it.
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"Farmers become numb to the risk. Not because they stop caring, but because they do the same thing a thousand times and their brain stops filing it as dangerous."
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Jeff's now on the other side of those accidents, going out to farms across all 72 Wisconsin counties to help injured farmers figure out how to stay in the operation. The program has helped around thirty-five hundred farmers over thirty years. They'll replumb a skid steer for one-handed control for a guy who lost his arm. They'll modify equipment, change workspace setups, whatever it takes to keep the farmer farming, and they have funding partnerships to help cover the cost.
The part that gets me is how few farmers know this exists. There are AgrAbility programs in twenty-three states. Iowa has one. Most of the farmers who need it have never heard the name. If you've had an accident or you know someone who has, look up AgrAbility for your state. In Wisconsin, it's eastersealswisconsin.com. The call costs nothing.
If you've had a close call or a full-on accident and you're trying to figure out how to keep going, hit reply. I mean it. We read them all.
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4 Things That Caught Our Eye This Week
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01
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EPA Finalizes "Set 2" Renewable Fuel Standards at Highest Volumes in Program History
The EPA finalized its long-awaited "Set 2" Renewable Fuel Standards this month, setting biofuel volume requirements for 2026 and 2027 at the highest levels since the program started 20 years ago. Conventional biofuels, which includes corn ethanol, stay at 15 billion gallons for both years. Biodiesel and renewable diesel volumes are scheduled to climb more than 60% versus 2025. EPA estimates the rule will generate over $10 billion in rural economic activity and support more than 100,000 ag and manufacturing jobs. Source: EPA news release, April 2026.
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02
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USDA Launches National Proving Grounds Network to Validate Agricultural Tech Under Real Farm Conditions
The USDA announced the National Proving Grounds Network for Agricultural Technology on April 7, a nationwide program to test emerging ag tech under real-world U.S. farming conditions rather than controlled research settings. The initiative is designed to give farmers independent, field-verified performance data to help them make better decisions about technology adoption. Whether the program produces useful data or just more government press releases will depend entirely on who picks the technologies and who funds the trials.
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03
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ABC: Construction Needs 349,000 New Workers in 2026, Over Half Just to Replace Retirees
The Associated Builders and Contractors released a 2026 workforce outlook this month showing the construction industry needs to add roughly 349,000 net new workers this year alone to keep pace with demand. More than half of that gap is just backfilling retirees. About one in five construction workers is already over 55, and younger workers aren't entering the trades fast enough to close it. Some firms are raising wages more than 20% to compete for carpenters, electricians, and concrete crews. The trades have been the quiet best-paying path in this economy for a couple years now, and the rest of the country is still catching up to that math.
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04
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USDA Lifts All-Milk Price Forecast to $19.70/cwt as Dairy Markets Finally Catch a Break
USDA's April dairy outlook bumped the 2026 all-milk price forecast to $19.70 per hundredweight, up 75 cents from the prior month's projection, with Class IV pushed up $1.45 to $17.15. Class I base price for April came in at $18.66/cwt. After years of small and mid-sized dairy operations getting squeezed out, the market is finally pointing the right direction for the guys who hung on. Supplies are still heavy enough to keep the ceiling in check, but for the first time in a while the dairy outlook is not the worst section of the report. Source: USDA AMS Advanced Prices, April 2026.
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Before You Go
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Barn Talk Trivia
Think You Know Your Stuff?
This Week's Question
What percentage of U.S. farms are classified as small family farms, meaning operations with annual gross cash sales under $350,000?
| A 68% |
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B 89% ✓ |
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| C 74% |
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D 93% |
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Answer
B. 89%. According to USDA data, roughly 89% of U.S. farms are classified as small family farms, where the principal operator and their relatives own the business and annual gross cash sales fall under $350,000. Despite being the overwhelming majority by count, these operations produce only about 20% of total U.S. agricultural output. The rest comes from mid-size and large commercial operations.
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Did You Know?
The average age of a U.S. farmer is 58 years old. For every farmer under 35, there are roughly six farmers over 65. The share of farmers under 35 has stayed below 10% for more than two decades despite various USDA beginning farmer programs intended to close that gap.
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Barn Talk Word of the Week
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JOURNEYMAN
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(n.) A skilled tradesman who has completed an apprenticeship and is licensed to work unsupervised, but has not yet reached master-level certification. In the modern building trades, a journeyman electrician, plumber, or carpenter is the backbone of the crew: fully certified, fully paid, and usually the one actually getting the work done. The term comes from the French "journée," meaning a day's work, because a journeyman could hire his labor out by the day instead of being bound to one master. Worth knowing as skilled-labor demand keeps climbing and the pipeline keeps shrinking.
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Thanks for being here this week. If something in this issue hit close to home, or you want to tell us what you're seeing out there on the farm or in your county, hit reply. We read every one. That's what this whole thing is built on.
We'll see you in the barn.
Sawyer & Tork
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