The March 31st Prospective Plantings report from the USDA was much anticipated and indicated that U.S. producers will shift a significant amount of acreage to corn in 2025.  An important…

Income projections suggest 2025 will be another low-income year, resulting in financial deterioration on many farms. Net income for 2025 is projected for a representative 1,500-acre farm with 20% owned, 40% share-rented, and 40% cash-rented. It is forecasted to be $26,010, a relatively low level. Income is expected to be much lower if less farmland is owned and more farmland is cash-rented. Farms with 100% of their acres cash-rented could face large losses.

The USDA’s March Hogs and Pigs report holds some bullish albeit mostly modest surprises, as most statistics are smaller than a year ago and below pre-report expectations of unchanged to higher. The March 1 inventory of all hogs and pigs is 74.5 million head, down about 0.5% from last quarter and almost 0.24% below a year ago, compared to pre-report estimates averaging 1.2% higher. The market hog inventory is also about 0.2% smaller than a year ago compared to expectations it would be 1.1% larger.

In the farmdoc daily of March 3, 2025, we documented the importance of the 1991 Farm Bill policy decision to give US farmers the freedom to make planting decisions less constrained by government commodity programs. In this article, we extend the analysis to other 1991 farm program crops as well as hay, the third largest US field crop in acres. These crops have evolved, with corn and soybeans becoming the Foundational Crops of modern agriculture, while hay and wheat are legacy large acreage crops.

As discussed previously, water laws in western states arguably pose the second greatest challenge or quandary for conservation policy (farmdoc daily, February 27, 2025). This quandary is magnified by that…

Livestock production is vulnerable to extreme weather. For dairy cattle, one of the main points of vulnerability is heat stress. High heat and humidity decrease appetites, increase thirst, increase agitation, and increase vulnerable to illness among dairy cattle. These changes can cause significant losses for dairy producers, especially in herds on farms without infrastructure to manage heat. This article covers the new research on the cost of extreme heat in terms of milk yield for Midwest dairy producers.