Field Posts

Despite the investment that many farmers make into crop insurance products, some policies in some parts of the country simply don’t pay out. As farmers look ahead to increasingly difficult conditions and no real prospect of improved indemnification, many are on the hunt for alternatives to conventional insurance products that are better built for unique and changing conditions in agriculture.

Today, we’re joined by DTN Farm Business...

Agriculture news has gone mainstream in a big way recently, and few farmers are happy about it. Immigration raids on farms, especially those in California and elsewhere along the U.S.’s southern border, have been growing as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials become a more and more constant presence on the road and in the field. And even farmers whose workers are hired through the H2-A program, the federal guest worker sy...

The July WASDE dropped Friday, July 11th, coming fast on the heels of USDA’s big June 30th update for planted acres, grain stocks, and more. Those latest figures updated the balance sheet, and when combined with the USDA’s new expectations for domestic and global demand, there were at least a few fireworks lighting up the market in the days after. 

To help us drink from this firehose of recent news, we’re joined today by DTN Lead An...

Finding good help on the farm is an age-old problem, but in recent months and years, the difficulty seems to have risen exponentially. Between the struggle of an aging rural workforce, the new pressures introduced by COVID, and the gaps and expenses of federal programs like H-2A, the challenges are piling up, while meaningful solutions remain thin on the ground. 

The DTN team is no stranger to this problem, which is why we dedicated...

The 90-day window that the Trump Administration created in order to negotiate new trade deals with over 200 countries comes to a close on July 9th. 

The goal for this time period was to create pressure and opportunities for America’s many and diverse trading partners to come to the table, propose strategies to reduce trade deficits, and offer more favorable treatment for American businesses and products. 

So far, the Trump administra...

An unprecedented era in U.S. cattle markets continues as what was supposed to be a hot and dry summer looks wetter and more temperate than anyone expected. 

In light of that, the idea of record cattle prices is increasingly becoming standard fare, as market fundamentals like herd size remain at historic levels. DTN’s recent Ag Summit Series event on the Future of the Cowherd dug into the weather, the economics, the latest ...

For anyone who’s been hoping for a surprise to boost markets recently, good news came from an unexpected place earlier this month. 

After months and months of delay, and multiple anonymous sources suggesting that biofuel levels were set to disappoint the industry, the actual numbers announced by EPA stunned watchers with a proposed 2 billion gallon jump up in the biomass based diesel requirements. And that was just the start of the ...

The June WASDE dropped Thursday, June 12, in the midst of a wild period of domestic and global news about everything from newly released biofuel commitments to the latest on the emerging conflict in the Middle East. There’s a lot to keep track of as the USDA aims to evaluate the old and new crops in the U.S. and around the world, and give producers a thoughtful look at what might come next — over a summer that meteorologists still ...

Whether you’re thinking about weather, markets, trade or farm bill policy, the last several months have been characterized by one thing — chaos. It seems to be impossible to stay up with the sheer quantity of news, updates, and announcements coming from every direction, which are continuously changing the outlook for the year ahead.

 Today, we wanted to take some time to talk through some time-tested strategies to deal with uncertai...

Just a few months ago, meteorologists at DTN and beyond were expressing concern about wide swaths of drought across key U.S. growing reasons, and the likelihood of a hot and dry summer set to exacerbate the situation. Now, after an unexpectedly wet and temperate start to the season, substantial drought is largely gone and conditions look good for the summer. But changes may still be on the horizon, and DTN’s Ag Meteorologist John B...

Every year for more than six decades, the Wheat Quality Council has sponsored a Winter Wheat Tour that criss-crosses the state of Kansas to get a mid-season update on what conditions look like in the field and what farmers, millers, and everyone in between might be able to expect from the annual crop. This year was no exception, and DTN Crops Editor Jason Jenkins is just back from three high impact days on the Southern Plains. 

Toda...

The months since President Trump first took office have been marked by executive orders, policy announcement, shakeups, and for many in ag, the hopes that policies will also provide protections from market and political fallout. Just this week, President Trump announced a pause for tariffs on China as trade talks continue, and that is just one of the many ways changes are leaving farmers uncertain about what the future holds. 

Today...

The May WASDE dropped Monday, May 5th, and the market reacted to both predicted records and to a few unexpected surprises. Given the number of acres and the USDA’s trendline yield, the department is officially estimating a record breaking corn crop in 2025– at least at this early moment in the season. 

To help us understand the latest, we’re joined once again by DTN’s Lead Analyst Rhett Montgomery, who puts both old crop updates and...

The winners of the National Wheat Yield Contest, hosted by the National Wheat Foundation, represent some of the most progressive and thoughtful wheat growers from across the country. 

This week, DTN Crops Editor Jason Jenkins takes the reins to lead us through a conversation with national winners Steve VanGrunsven, a grower/agronomist in Forest Grove, Oregon and Travis Messer, the grower/agronomist at Beaver Creek Ranch in Richardto...

John Deere’s See & Spray technology crashed onto the precision spraying scene a few years ago, making a big splash in the industry long before it was killing weeds in commercial fields. Since then, progress on sense and act technologies has felt like it’s both made big leaps forwards and lagged behind expectations. 

Now, in 2025, millions of acres are being treated with precision spray tools across the U.S. and around the world,...

Uncertainty and unpredictability in Washington and beyond have made following updates around ethanol, biodiesel, and the ongoing fight around sustainable aviation fuel challenging for farmers and industry watchers alike. As advocates spend time sitting down with the new Trump administration and farmers try their best to make planting decisions, the broader atmosphere around trade, interest rates, and markets adds another layer of c...

The April WASDE dropped Thursday, April 10, bringing with it a raft of bearish and bullish updates for the three major grains. This month’s report came in the wake not only of market-cratering tariff announcements, but also in the week after the department’s latest Grain Stocks Report and the annual Prospective Planting update, meaning the USDA had plenty to chew on when shaping the latest numbers.

To guide us through this trove of ...

Cattle sellers continue to rule in beef markets, fetching record prices in recent months and weeks as expectations for more growth in the cattle herd come up short. But there’s more than just prices to watch as multiple factors — from pests and disease to shifting trade regimes to the state of individual ranch and packing businesses — come into play.

To help us find the insights in the noise, we’re joined this week by DTN Livestock ...

Each year, the National Wheat Yield Contest, hosted by the National Wheat Foundation, attracts top growers from across the country to compete to grow the healthiest, and largest, wheat crop in the nation. 

The 2024 results are officially in, and farmers in the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Plains managed to bring home many of the top accolades, and though 2024 didn’t quite offer record-setting conditions, some of the yields wer...