BARN TALK
The Unfiltered Voice of Rural America
Weekly Newsletter · Issue #14 · July 1, 2026
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Hey folks, it has been one of those weeks where the only thing moving in a straight line is the rain. Washington spent it deciding whether it actually wants your crops picked, fed cattle are knocking on a record nobody has ever seen, and crude oil fell off a cliff. Meanwhile a kid who just won a Super Bowl told us the thing he cannot wait to get back to is a tractor in South Dakota. Pour the coffee.
This Week
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Washington paused farm raids, then restarted them days later. Your food is caught in the middle.
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Fed cattle are pushing $260 and boxed beef cracked $400. Records nobody planned for.
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The biggest grain report of the year drops June 30. Acres and stocks, all at once.
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Crude crashed to three-month lows. Your diesel bill is finally catching a break.
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A Super Bowl champ who farms 242 acres and calls it honest work.
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WASHINGTON CAN'T DECIDE IF IT WANTS YOUR CROPS PICKED
This summer the federal government has run hot and cold on the people who actually harvest the food. In early June, after farm groups begged for relief, the administration paused immigration enforcement on farms. Within days the raids were back on. Then the President floated the idea of some kind of temporary pass for workers who are already here doing jobs almost nobody else will take.
The Whiplash
The same administration that promised mass deportations would hand every farm job to an American worker has quietly admitted the crackdown is making the labor shortage worse. So now it is standing up a new Office of Immigration Policy to speed up temporary work visas, and it rewrote the H-2A wage formula in a way that lowers what guest workers get paid. The United Farm Workers is suing, arguing the cut drags down wages for American workers right alongside them. Everybody is angry and nobody is picking any faster.
Who Actually Pays
Florida citrus growers say they have lost roughly 15,000 workers since January and expect yields to fall about 25%. Apple country in Michigan and Washington is staring at picking gaps that could cut output by a third. More than 14% of farmers reported worker shortages tied to the raids and the fear around them, and for fruit and vegetable growers that number climbs closer to 20%. A crop that does not get picked does not get a do-over. It rots in the row.
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From the Barn
Nobody writing these rules in DC has ever watched a ripe crop go past ready while they waited on a phone call. You cannot run an operation on a policy that changes its mind every single week. Pick a lane and let the people who feed this country plan their season.
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FED CATTLE ARE CHASING A RECORD AND THE WHOLE CHAIN FEELS IT
Cash cattle traded near $260 a hundredweight late last week, with sales across Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa all clustered right around $259. Wholesale boxed beef pushed Choice product past $400. These are numbers the cattle business has never printed before, and they are not an accident.
The herd is the smallest it has been in generations, weekly slaughter is running tight, and demand has not blinked. When fewer cattle move into a market that still wants beef, price does the rest of the work.
Where The Numbers Sit
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Fed cattle cash near $260/cwt, with all four major feeding states reporting close to $259.
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Choice boxed beef above $400, with Select product around $381.
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Weekly slaughter holding near 520,000 to 530,000 head and expected to stay tight through July.
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What It Means For You
If you have got cattle ready, this is the paycheck you have waited years on, and there is no shame in taking it. The flip side is the feeder market and the freezer aisle. Replacements cost a fortune, and your customer is staring at sticker shock at the meat counter. Tight supply is a beautiful thing right up until it is your turn to buy back in.
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From the Barn
Ranchers spent a decade getting kicked while the packers printed money. For once the leverage is on the right side of the fence. Cattle are finally paying the people who raise them. Take the win, pay down a note, and do not let anybody guilt you for getting what the work is worth.
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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 24, 2026 · Courtesy of katsgrain.com
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Corn (Jul '26)
$4.07 /bu
▼ $0.10 on the week
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Soybeans (Jul '26)
$11.08 3/4 /bu
▼ $0.19 on the week
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Chicago Wheat (Jul '26)
$5.85 3/4 /bu
▼ $0.06 on the week
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Live Cattle (Jun '26)
$256.00 /cwt
▲ $1.50 on the week
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Lean Hogs (Jul '26)
$93.85 /cwt
▼ $1.40 on the week
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Crude Oil (Aug '26)
$70.34 /bbl
▼ $7.66 on the week
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Tork's Picks
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Bitcoin
$62,650 USD
▼ $2,930 on the week
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Tesla (TSLA)
$374.84 /share
▼ $25.16 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
Crude falling off a cliff is the best line on this whole page. When oil drops, your diesel and eventually your fertilizer follow it down, and that is real money back in your pocket for summer fieldwork. Grain is soft because the crop looks good, which is just the market telling you the truth. Cattle are the lone green arrow and they earned every penny of it. As for my picks, Bitcoin and Tesla both got hauled to the woodshed when the AI stocks finally took a haircut this week. I do not own either one, and a 10% crash in the chip names is a fine reminder of why I would rather own ground that grows something I can sell.
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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 you can tell the cameras do not change a single thing about who they are. Grey Zabel is one of those guys. He just won a Super Bowl as a rookie offensive lineman, went 18th overall in the draft, and the thing he could not wait to get back to was a tractor in South Dakota.
He farms 242 acres he took over from his late grandpa. He is the first to tell you it is not a big outfit. When he tried to land an operating note as a broke 21-year-old college kid, the bank did the math and told him he would need 333 bushel corn just to break even. So his dad became his banker instead, and Grey wrote him an IOU for twenty grand after losing money his first year, the way pretty much everybody does.
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“It's not much, but it's honest work.”
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What stuck with me was how he tied football to farming. He said when you drive past a field and see four rows that did not come up, everybody in the truck decides the farmer is an idiot. Same as a lineman who gets beat for a sack on national TV. Nobody saw the ninety blocks he made, or the months of work behind a good crop. They only remember the one that went wrong.
That is the part of this life people miss. The work that matters happens where nobody is watching, and you do it anyway because your name is on it, and your family's name was on it before you. A kid with a Super Bowl ring who would rather talk about side dressing corn gets that in his bones. It tells you everything about how he was raised.
If you have got somebody in your family whose name is on the ground you farm, hit reply and tell me about them. 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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The Biggest Grain Report of the Year Lands June 30
USDA drops its annual Acreage report and quarterly Grain Stocks numbers the day before this email hits your inbox. Back in March, farmers said they would plant 95.3 million acres of corn and 84.7 million acres of beans. This report tells us what actually went in the ground and how much old crop is still sitting in the bin. Expect the market to jump in one direction or the other.
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02
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China Is Quietly Buying Soybeans Again
USDA confirmed a 132,000 metric ton new-crop soybean sale to China, and old-crop export sales just hit a 10-week high. There is also chatter that Beijing is trimming its tariffs on US grain. It is not a flood yet, but after months of China shopping everywhere except here, even the small buys are worth keeping an eye on.
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03
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Crude's Crash Is a Quiet Win for Your Diesel Bill
WTI fell to three-month lows near $70 after the US and Iran signed a framework to wind down the fighting and tankers started moving through the Strait of Hormuz again. A few weeks back everybody was bracing for $90 oil. Cheaper crude works its way down to the diesel tank and the fertilizer bill right when you are running equipment the hardest.
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04
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The Crop Looks Good, and That's Its Own Problem
Corn is rated 69% good-to-excellent and soybeans 67%, with planting all but wrapped up and emergence running ahead of the five-year average. A crop that looks this clean is great for your yield and rough on your price, because the trade is staring at the same fields you are. The next month of pollination weather decides whether those ratings hold.
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Before You Go
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Barn Talk Trivia
Think You Know Your Stuff?
This Week's Question
A regulation American football field, end zones included, covers about how much ground?
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B About 1.3 acres |
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| C About 2.5 acres |
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D A full 4 acres |
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Did You Know?
The United States has roughly 900 million acres of farmland, which works out to close to 40% of all the land in the country. Almost half of the lower 48 is dirt that somebody is farming or grazing.
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Barn Talk Word of the Week
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SIDE-DRESS
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Applying fertilizer, usually nitrogen, in a band right alongside a crop's rows after the plants are already up and growing, instead of putting it all down before planting. It feeds the corn when it is hungriest and cuts down on what washes away early in the season.
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Whether your name is on 240 acres or 2,400, the work is the same kind of honest. Thanks for spending a few minutes in the barn with us. If somebody in your life would get something out of this, get them on the list, because every name gets us closer to filling this place up in person.
We'll see you in the barn.
Sawyer & Tork
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© 2026 Barn Talk · joinbarntalk.com · This week's episode: EP208
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