AgWeb

Grains were sharply higher on Friday with livestock lower. Wheat Lead Gains on Black Sea Export Concerns Winter wheat futures rallied 22 to 34 cents on Friday and posted higher weekly closes. Naomi Blohm of Total Farm Marketing says wheat was adding geopolitical premium with fighting escalating in the Black Sea region as Ukraine hit another major Russian export port in the Baltic Sea. She says the market is getting concerned it won’t be able to get wheat, and even corn exported.

Farmers across the Midwest can’t seem to catch a break from the rain this week, and the timing couldn’t be more consequential. Pro Farmer’s annual Crop Tour kicks off Monday, sending scouts across a wider swath of the Corn Belt than ever before to groundtruth just how big, or how battered, this year’s corn and soybean crop really is. The tour comes at a moment when the crop’s story keeps changing by the week.

Livestock were sharply lower early Friday with grains higher. Cattle Futures Crash on Tyson Plant Closure Cattle futures were sharply lower reacting to the news Tyson is closing its Joslin, Ill. beef plant immediately and will be selling its Pasco, WA plant. Plus its case ready plant in Eagle Mountain, UT will be shuttering. The company may add a second shift to its Amarillo, TX plant.

While another round of weather extremes is bearing down on soybean fields as mid-August gets underway, growers still have opportunities to protect 2026 yield potential, according to Missy Bauer. Bauer, Farm Journal Field Agronomist and co-owner of B & M Crop Consulting in Coldwater, Mich., says the focus now should be on the soybean yield components growers can still influence: number of seeds per pod and seed weight.

On the evening of June 12, 2026, the most capable artificial intelligence (AI) model available to the public simply vanished. The U.S. Commerce Department, citing national security authorities, ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its newest Claude models — Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — by any foreign national, including the company’s own noncitizen employees.

In many ag retail and grain settlement workflows, digital progress hits a ceiling: liens. When liens attach to grain proceeds, buyers often fall back on older processes—two-party checks, mailed documents, manual lien searches, stop payments, Positive Pay steps, and heavy coordination between farmers and lienholders. The result is slower settlement and higher operational friction at the exact moment when everyone wants payments to move smoothly.

The bar for the U.S. corn crop was lowered entering 2026. Crop rotation considerations alone made a decline in acreage virtually certain following 2025’s massive 98.8 million planted acres — the highest since 1933. A fertilizer price surge following the outbreak of the Iran War intensified the acreage debate. Uncertainty mounted over whether soaring input costs would drive producers toward soybeans, casting doubt on if the March 31 Prospective Plantings figures would hold up.

Tyson Foods today announced network restructuring for its beef business to strengthen long-term performance. According to the company’s website, “Tyson Foods is making strategic changes to its beef operations to position the company for long-term success.

When Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) Outreach Agronomist Stephanie Porter launched the group’s first on-farm sulfur (S) trial network, she wanted to answer a question farmers across the state were asking: If I’m already applying sulfur to corn, do my soybeans need it, too? After a season of trial work across Illinois in 2025, the answer is sometimes — but only under certain conditions. Porter addressed the research during the 2026 Field Advisor Forum.

Grain and livestock futures closed mostly lower on Thursday. Grains See Profit Taking The grain markets saw some profit taking and consolidation after the big rally on Wednesday. Sam Hudson of Corn Belt Marketing says the grain rally was impressive but ran out of steam. “It was one, if not the highest percentage move we’ve seen on the year, actually, in the corn market yesterday. Open interest didn’t change hardly at all. So not totally surprised to see a little bit of a backtrack here.