BARN TALK
The Unfiltered Voice of Rural America
Issue #025 · September 16, 2026
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Hey folks, diesel set an all-time record Friday at $6.05 a gallon and the combines are barely out of the shed. That is $55 to $92 more for every hour you run than last September cost. Grain gave ground, crude closed over a hundred bucks, and an Idaho county that banned wind and solar wants it back.
In this issue
| Diesel hit $6.05 a gallon and harvest is only starting |
| An Idaho county banned wind and solar and now wants the money |
| A judge froze USDA's move of 2,500 employees until October 2 |
| USDA cut the corn yield 2.2 bushels and raised beans anyway |
| A Nebraska rancher started with $278 and 550 head to feed |
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DIESEL SET A RECORD THE WEEK THE COMBINES ROLLED OUT
At $6.05 a gallon, a combine, a cart and two trucks burn $145 to $242 an hour.
The national average price of diesel hit $6.05 a gallon Friday, the highest it has ever been. That broke the $5.94 record set two days before, which broke the $5.90 set over Labor Day weekend. A year ago the same gallon ran about $3.75.
What it costs by the hour
Run the arithmetic on a fall crew. A combine burns 12 to 18 gallons an hour, a tractor and grain cart another six to 10, and two semis hauling to town put the outfit at 24 to 40 gallons every hour it turns. Last September that was $90 to $150. Friday it was $145 to $242. You are paying $55 to $92 more per hour of harvest and nobody raised your bid to cover it.
The bill arrives twice
Diesel is also in the fertilizer truck, the grain hauler and the service call, so you pay once at your own tank and again inside everybody else's freight. EIA raised its 2026 forecast 22 cents to $5.07 and has stockpiles falling under 100 million barrels, thinnest since 2003. Crude settled at $100.05 Friday, up $8.57 on the week, on the fighting with Iran.
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From the Barn
You cannot hedge diesel the way you hedge corn, and you cannot park the combine and wait on a better price. The crop is ready when it is ready, the cost climbs, the bid does not, and the gap comes out of your year. Book what you can for spring while somebody will still write it.
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THE COUNTY THAT BANNED WIND AND SOLAR WANTS IT BACK
In October 2023 the commissioners of Bannock County, Idaho put a six-month moratorium on large energy projects, and in March 2024 they made it a ban on a two to one vote. The lone no was Jeff Hough. Hough is the chairman now and he is leading the effort to undo it. What changed was the ledger.
By the numbers
| $909,000 in one year is what Power County took in off its energy projects in 2024, and Bingham took $639,000. Bannock took nothing. |
| 400 acres is what Dale Lish put under contract with a developer in 2023, at four to five times per acre what that ground paid him in wheat. The ban killed the renewal. |
| One gigawatt is how much more power Idaho Power expects to need by 2030, about 26 percent above today. |
Who actually decides
The rewrite would let solar, wind and nuclear back in through a conditional use permit instead of a flat no, with a bond posted, a decommissioning plan filed and the fire department paid for battery gear. The commission votes this fall.
The opposition is local and serious. Neighbors who turned down offers on their own ground organized against the projects. Hough won his May primary by 14 points countywide and lost Downey, the town nearest the panels, better than two to one.
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From the Barn
Both sides of this own dirt, which is what makes it hard. One neighbor wants to lease his worst quarter for four times what wheat pays. The other looks at it out the kitchen window for 30 years. Bannock settled that for everybody with one ordinance. Go read your own county's rules this winter. The day a land man knocks is too late.
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This week's numbers
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Corn (Dec '26)
$5.30 1/4 /bu
▼ $0.06 1/2 on the week
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Soybeans (Nov '26)
$12.96 1/2 /bu
▼ $0.13 1/4 on the week
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Chicago Wheat (Dec '26)
$7.25 1/4 /bu
▼ $0.08 3/4 on the week
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Live Cattle (Oct '26)
$219.67 /cwt
▲ $6.72 on the week
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Lean Hogs (Oct '26)
$81.52 /cwt
▼ $0.78 on the week
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Crude Oil (Oct '26)
$100.05 /bbl
▲ $8.57 on the week
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Tork's Picks
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Bitcoin
$77,666 USD
▼ $3,574 on the week
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Valero (VLO)
$390.42 /share
▲ $19.70 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 over a hundred is the number that costs you money you already spent. Corn, beans and wheat all gave a little back, so you are paying more to harvest a crop worth less than it was seven days ago. October cattle added $6.72 and still cannot find a top. Valero touched an all-time high the same week you paid $6.05 at the pump, which is what a refining margin looks like from the other side. If you buy fuel load to load, go make the call.
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Every so often somebody sits down in the barn and says a number that tells you more than an hour of talking would. Luke Kovarik runs a registered Angus outfit outside Ord, Nebraska with his wife Natalie. His number was $278.
His family had 160 acres and no room on it. He went to Lincoln for dental school, sat through one class with the other pre-dental kids, decided he was not one of them, and switched to animal science. He came out with a master's in ruminant nutrition and nowhere to go.
Then two things landed inside about a year. A family friend wanted to semi-retire and leased out his cows and his ranch, and a place a half mile off that would run 250 head came up for sale. He went from about 125 head to 550, took every beginning farmer and rancher loan the FSA would write, and when the paperwork finally stacked the way it had to, here is where he stood.
“I had $278 to my name when I got done making everything look as good as it could look, but it had to be positive.” |
That was 2009. They run around 700 cows now and sell registered bulls every January, and none of it happens without a lender willing to look at a kid with a degree, no equity and a stack of leases and sign anyway. Dad said something later I have not put down. Contract hog finishing used to be how a kid got home here, because building costs climbed about three percent a year while interest fell, so the net cost sat still and the barn paid for itself. That math is gone. He asks every room of bankers what the next one is, and nobody has an answer.
If you got your start on somebody else's signature, I want to know whose. Hit reply, I read every one.
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Four things that caught our eye
| 01 |
A judge just froze USDA's moveOn September 14 a federal judge in California said he would block USDA from relocating employees until October 2, with the next hearing September 29. About 2,500 people are expected to get relocation notices. 725 have, and USDA says 64 percent accepted. Four federal unions sued, calling it a reduction in force in disguise, since nobody will say who fills the jobs of those who quit. |
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| 02 |
USDA cut the corn yield and raised beans anywayThe September 11 WASDE put corn at 178.5 bushels an acre, down 2.2 from August, with production off 213 million bushels. Then it lifted soybeans to 52.8 when the trade looked for a cut, taking production to 4.54 billion bushels. USDA also pulled 150 million bushels out of corn feed use, so most of that cut never reached the stocks line. |
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| 03 |
Rural Texas is short on groceries and long on sick peopleA Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation study, covered by the Daily Yonder on September 10, found more than 80 percent of rural Texans live where the risk of serious chronic disease runs high. 21.3 percent of Texans reported food insecurity from 2020 to 2022 against 15.5 percent nationally, and one stretch of East Texas has 33 grocery stores for 150,000 people. |
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| 04 |
The bus is not comingAgriNews reported September 11 that driver shortages are leaving students without a ride to school, and 71 percent of district administrators say it cost them something concrete in the past year. Rural routes run longest and are hardest to fill, and a rural family has the fewest ways around it. A CDL used to be worth real money in a small town, and will have to be again. |
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Barn Talk Poll
Where do you land?
When does your day start?
| A. Before 5am |
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B. 5 to 6am |
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| C. 6 to 7am |
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D. After 7am |
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Did You Know?
In this year's contractor workforce survey, 87 percent of construction firms had hourly craft openings, and electricians were the trade they reported the most trouble with. Of the firms hiring them, 81 percent could not find one.
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Word of the Week
| SHRINK |
The weight a load loses coming down to contract moisture. Haul in wet corn, the elevator dries it to 15 percent and bills you for the water and the fuel both, and the settlement comes back lighter than the truck scale said. Run that math before you fire the dryer at home. |
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Harvest is the one stretch of the year where everything is out of your hands at once. Weather, moisture, the line at the elevator, and a fuel bill that moved while you greased the combine. Run safe and knock off early at least twice this month.
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: #EP217
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