BARN TALK
The Unfiltered Voice of Rural America
Weekly Newsletter · Issue #012 · June 17, 2026
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Hey folks, the USDA just put $700 million behind the idea that what's living in your soil matters. The Farm Bill got pushed back again. July is now the earliest for markup, and that is exactly what no farmer in the middle of the worst income year in a decade needed to hear. And a Kentucky agronomist who quit a corporate job, went to farm in Australia, and came back with a different way of thinking about the dirt under your feet has a message worth sitting with.
This Week
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USDA opens enrollment on a $700M regenerative ag pilot: cover crops, microbes, and soil health practices get federal backing for the first time
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Senate Ag pushes Farm Bill markup to July. The fourth delay on a bill already two years late.
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Colorado declares a statewide drought emergency. Ranchers are hauling water and cutting herds.
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Ground beef is closing in on $7 a pound. Record prices with no relief in the near-term forecast.
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Why more women in agriculture is better for agriculture, and what the Year of the Woman Farmer actually means on the ground
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THE USDA JUST PUT $700 MILLION BEHIND YOUR SOIL
In December 2025, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood at the same announcement table and launched a $700 million Regenerative Agriculture Pilot Program. The framing was direct: reduce farmer production costs and advance the MAHA agenda at the same time. Six months later, the money is moving. Enrollment windows are open in several states right now, and the program runs through two mechanisms most farmers already know.
What the $700 million actually covers
$400 million flows through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and $300 million through the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), both managed by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The pilot covers whole-farm regenerative practices: cover crops, reduced tillage, biological inputs, and soil health management. Farmers apply through their local NRCS service center. State ranking dates vary, so check the NRCS program page for your state's current window.
Why the timing matters now
Missouri's CRCL cover crop incentive project, funded through the pilot, opened first-come first-served enrollment on June 1 with a July 10 cutoff. If you're in Missouri or an adjacent state with active NRCS partnerships, that window is closing fast. More broadly, this is the first time Washington has put a dedicated, named funding pool specifically behind biologicals, cover crops, and soil biology work at the federal level. It is not a substitute for building soil health the hard way over time. But it is real money with enrollment open now, and the connection between the MAHA health agenda and what happens underground on the farm is finally showing up in policy.
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From the Barn
RFK and Rollins on the same stage talking about soil biology is not something you would have predicted five years ago. That's either a sign things are genuinely changing or a sign that Washington found a new way to spend money on something it doesn't fully understand. Probably some of both. What matters is whether the practices hold up when the funding cycle ends. Soil health built on a subsidy check isn't soil health. It's a starting point.
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THE FARM BILL GOT PUSHED AGAIN. HERE'S WHERE IT ACTUALLY STANDS.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman spent the spring of 2026 telling reporters a markup was coming in June. June arrived and Agri-Pulse reported on June 9 that the new window is July 13 through August 7. Bill text is expected to drop within weeks. This is the fourth time the markup timeline has moved. The current Farm Bill extension expires September 30, 2026. Congress needs a bill or another short-term patch before that date or programs lose their legal basis.
One detail confirmed in the delay announcement: E15, the higher-ethanol blend that corn state senators have lobbied hard for, is not expected to be in the Senate version. That is a blow for corn growers who have been pushing for expanded E15 distribution for years. On the commodity title, the fight over reference prices (the price floors that trigger ARC and PLC payments) is still unresolved. Nutrition funding and the SNAP program remain the biggest source of friction between the two parties.
The numbers behind the delay
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September 30, 2026. The current extension expires on that date. Another miss means another continuing resolution or short-term patch.
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4th delay. The Senate markup has slipped from March to May to June and now to July-August.
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80%+ of Farm Bill spending goes to nutrition programs. That is where the money fight is, and it is the reason this bill always moves slower than commodity farmers expect.
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What it means for you
A delayed Farm Bill means uncertainty on crop insurance provisions, conservation program funding, commodity reference prices, and rural development spending. All at the same time, in the worst margin year most operations have seen in a decade. If you were waiting on clarity before making decisions on next year's inputs or land, add another 60 days. The one thing Senate Ag has been consistent about is that a bipartisan bill is the only bill that moves. If that is still true, the timeline is July and nobody should bet the operation that it holds.
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From the Barn
Four delays on a bill that was already two years late. The people who grow food for this country are operating on a continuing extension while Congress works out who gets what in a program that is mostly not about farming. We keep coming back to the same point: the people in D.C. making decisions about agriculture do not understand what it costs to put a corn crop in the ground right now. Nothing about that has changed.
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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 · June 10, 2026 · Courtesy of katsgrain.com
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Corn (Jul '26)
$4.19 /bu
▼ $0.22 on the week
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Soybeans (Jul '26)
$11.14 /bu
▼ $0.51 on the week
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Chicago Wheat (Jul '26)
$5.85 /bu
▼ $0.18 on the week
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Live Cattle (Jun '26)
$250.10 /cwt
▲ $2.42 on the week
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Lean Hogs (Jun '26)
$93.18 /cwt
▼ $2.52 on the week
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Crude Oil (Jul '26)
$88.20 /bbl
▼ $5.56 on the week
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Tork's Picks
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Bitcoin
$61,531 USD
▼ $7,719 on the week
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Beyond Meat (BYND)
$0.67 /share
▼ $0.07 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
Corn and beans both got hit hard this week and the reason is not a mystery. Brazil's safrinha is rolling and the market is pricing in that supply. The $4.41 corn we had a week ago is gone. Beans dropped more than 50 cents. Wheat still can't find a bottom. Cattle are the bright spot. Live cattle pushed above $250 and if you've got finished cattle ready to move, this is the window you've been waiting on. Crude backing off below $90 takes a little pressure off fuel heading into summer fieldwork. Bitcoin gave back $7,700 in a week for anyone who thought the bottom was in. Beyond Meat at 67 cents is what happens when you build a company on the premise that people want to stop eating real food.
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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 comes through the barn who makes you rethink something you thought you already understood. Nicole Glenn grew up on a Kentucky farm where her family grew tobacco, got her master's degree in weed science and entomology at Mississippi State, and spent a few years as a corporate agronomist recommending fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides to farmers in Tennessee. Then she quit, went to Australia to drive a $1.3 million combine for a harvest season, came back, and started consulting independently with no product to sell and no co-op behind her. Her brand is The Farm Company. Her whole thing is soil biology.
The shift happened when she realized that everything she was recommending in her corporate role was something that kills something. Fungicide, insecticide, herbicide. Pass after pass, she was nuking the biology to solve problems that the biology was partly creating by being starved and suppressed. She started asking a different question. Instead of what do I apply to fix this problem, what would make the plant and the soil resilient enough to not have the problem in the first place?
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“If any other business owner had a resource like the soil, they would be investing a lot more time and money into understanding it. We have been bypassing what the soil can really do for our plants.”
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Her analogy for where conventional farming has landed stuck with me. She said the soil is essentially a drug addict. We have supplied it with everything it needs synthetically for so long that it has forgotten how to extract fertility on its own. The plants aren't building resilience because they don't have to. The biology that would normally work for you has been suppressed or starved into inactivity. A standard soil test shows chemistry. It does not show what the biology is doing to that chemistry, or what it could do if you gave it a reason to work.
She is not anti-chemical, and that is the part I appreciated most. She is not walking onto your farm and telling you to pull your herbicides. She is saying start small. Add a microbial seed inoculant. Tighten up your nitrogen use efficiency with carbon sources and the right trace minerals. Think about what each pass is actually doing to the microbiome. Make the transition slow and intentional, not a single dramatic overhaul. Her dad gave her 200 acres to work with when she started. The first year they backed off a significant chunk of their nitrogen rate and it felt terrifying. That is the honest version of this conversation, and it is more useful than anything you'll hear from someone who is also trying to sell you a product.
Search Nicole Glenn on TikTok and Instagram. Look for the hat in the profile picture. Merch and consulting at farmco.shop. If the soil health conversation is one you've been having on your operation, hit reply and tell me where you're at with it.
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4 Things That Caught Our Eye This Week
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01
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Colorado declared a statewide drought emergency on June 4
Governor Polis activated Phase 3 of the state's drought response plan as 93% of Colorado entered drought conditions. Ranchers are hauling water and reducing herd sizes as canal systems run dry. The declaration releases additional state and federal funding for producers, but the underlying problem is that snowpack hit record lows this winter and there is no quick fix to that. The Mountain West's water math is getting harder every year, and ranchers who depend on irrigation are doing the same calculation farmers everywhere else are doing: how long can you run this operation on conditions that keep getting worse?
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02
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Ground beef is approaching $7 a pound and the math behind it is not improving
Bloomberg reported this week that ground beef is averaging close to $7 per pound nationally, with some cuts near $10. The U.S. cattle herd is at a 75-year low, driven by years of drought conditions and the ongoing screwworm situation at the southern border. Herd rebuilding takes years, not months. If you run cattle, prices are real and the window is open. If you're buying groceries, the sticker shock at the meat counter is not going away anytime soon. This is a supply problem, not a demand problem, and supply problems like this one don't reverse on a quarterly basis.
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03
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2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer, and the data behind it is worth knowing
The American Farm Bureau hosted its Women in Agriculture ACE Summit in Washington June 1-3. A national study released there surveyed nearly 4,400 women in agriculture and found that close to 90% want leadership roles. The barriers identified: time, caregiving responsibilities, access to capital, and a culture that still treats women as support staff rather than decision-makers. Nicole Glenn made a point that applies directly: stop masking your feminine energy to fit into a masculine culture. Bring it. It is what agriculture is short on right now.
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04
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Rural broadband's last-mile problem is still not solved
Delaware completed its middle-mile fiber buildout and has now shifted to the harder work of getting connections to individual rural properties. The pattern repeats in most states: federal money built the backbone infrastructure, but the final stretch to actual farms and homes is where the funding and the momentum both tend to run out. Rural broadband penetration is still below 65% in many agricultural states. The infrastructure exists closer to town centers. Getting it the last few miles to a farm is where the money stalls, and the farms that need it most are usually the farthest out.
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Before You Go
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Barn Talk Trivia
Think You Know Your Stuff?
This Week's Question
Kentucky is famous for bourbon, but which state actually leads the country in tobacco production?
| A Kentucky |
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B North Carolina |
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| C Tennessee |
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D Virginia |
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Did You Know?
Total U.S. farm debt crossed $500 billion for the first time in 2023 and has continued climbing since. That is more than the GDP of most countries. The interest payments on that debt are landing on farms at the worst possible time: commodity prices are compressed, input costs are still elevated from the past three years, and the Farm Bill that governs the safety net is two years late and counting.
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Barn Talk Word of the Week
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HUSBANDRY
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The practice of farming and raising livestock, with a particular emphasis on careful, long-term stewardship of land and resources. The original meaning went beyond growing things for profit. Husbandry was about managing a farm for the long haul. Working with natural systems, not burning through them. It is the word that captures what Nicole Glenn was pushing farmers toward in this issue: treating the soil as a resource worth cultivating, not a delivery mechanism for synthetic inputs.
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Nicole Glenn said something in the barn that has been sitting with us since she left. She said if you owned any other business with a resource as valuable as your soil, you would be putting serious money into understanding it. Most farms have been supplying that resource with synthetics for so long it has forgotten how to work on its own. That does not mean the system is broken beyond repair. The rebuild is slow, intentional work. The farmers who start now are the ones who will have resilient operations when input costs force everyone else to change.
We'll see you in the barn.
Sawyer & Tork
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