71–80 of 187 posts
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Is this relevant in 2026? Are people still claiming land via the 1877 Desert Land Act?
Yet it's still active. As a pure anecdote, I know of someone doing it right now. https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/Desert%20Land%20Entr...
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Has the USA's potash supply been reduced due to strained relations with Canada? They are our top supplier, by far.
It's the nitrogen fertilizer almost all of which is manufactured from methane + air.
For supplemental fertilizer you buy though you are correct.
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Desalination isn't really much of an option for deeper inland and much higher than sea level areas. Tell me, which ocean is Dodge City KS going to pull from?
Global warming will bring the sea to them
If the ocean is anywhere near there, Tulsa OK would be under some 800 feet of ocean.
The Great Lakes will have also been flooded by the oceans, as they top out at ~600ft ASL.
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Yet it's still active. As a pure anecdote, I know of someone doing it right now. https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/Desert%20Land%20Entr...
Is this an opportunity that opened up with this administration? Or has the BLM been quietly processing these for the last century?
I'm not sure if the BLM has relaxed their discretion under Trump.
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Largely not. Data center people aren't idiots. They site their projects in places with water and power, or if not power then at least gas. I don't think you'd be able to point out a project that actually exists and is competing for a scarce local water resource.
Data centers don't use much water on the scale of things. The numbers look big in isolation, but most people have no idea how much water a country really needs and isolating the numbers makes data centers look bad.
This is about China. The timing of this article coming out during the Trump-China summit is no accident. The article beat around the bush (pun intended) that the real issue here is that China stopped buying (or seriously cut back) US agricultural products (particularly soy) because of tariffs imposed on China last year that got to over 100% at one point. China now buys significantly more soy from Argentina instead. T…
IDK how many people in China are laser focused on agweb.com for their geopolitical negotiations. The data comes from USDA's WASDE report which is released every month, between the 8th and 12th. There is no "timing," and people were talking about the expect wheat harvest this season for weeks ahead of Tue's report anyway
The "when" of media coverage is just as important as the "what" and the "when" here is while the president is currently in China. If you want to think that's irrelevant, that's a choice I guess.
Western hay prices are as much as double what they were last year for feed: https://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/comments/1ta64d0/breaking...
The website's domain was created 3 months ago (site doesn't even have any entries in the wayback machine) and supposedly pulls from USDA AMS data but when I looked at reports[1][2] I didn't see double prices compared to last year.
Some prices even looked lower? But it was hard to make comparisons because of report structure and data disparity.
[1] CA Hay: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/viewReport/2904
[2] CO Hay: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/viewReport/2905
Title claims "due to plains drought" but the article text largely attributes this to increased planting of soy for its lower fertilizer requirements (related to Strait of Hormuz).
"a severe drought in the U.S. Plains has curbed production of hard red winter wheat, the largest variety grown in the U.S... The USDA projected U.S. wheat production in the 2026/27 season at 1.561 billion bushels, down from 1.985 billion in 2025/26, as a severe drought in the U.S. Plains was likely to slash the hard red winter wheat crop by 25% from a year earlier."
"The USDA rated just 28% of the U.S. winter wheat crop in good-to-excellent condition in a weekly crop conditions report on Monday, the lowest rating for this point in the growing season in four years."
This was mentioned in the very first sentence, it's the very first attribution of falling wheat harvest.
Yes Hormuz and rising oil costs are also a factor, a secondary one since they are impacting spring wheat planting decisions as you mention.
Title claims "due to plains drought" but the article text largely attributes this to increased planting of soy for its lower fertilizer requirements (related to Strait of Hormuz).
So lower fertilizer demand, and healthier produce, could be a net positive.
Kind of like an oil shortage is driving an increase in EVs and renewable energy.
Finally waking up the US that oil dependence is a National Security issue that renewables are possible solution for. That renewables aren't the 'woke' enemy, but a valid technical option.
So, maybe a net positive.
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I expect other nations are still consuming US soybeans. China stopped because it was particularly negatively targeted by US tariff policy. But make no mistake, it has caused problems for farmers. The report from my small hometown farmers is that everything, except for beef, is down right now while the prices of inputs like fertilizer are high. Some of the farmers in my hometown have already sold their land to megacor…
It wouldn't surprise me, at all, if the soybeans rotted away with no consumers.
On reddit, some farmers have cited 1 to 1 and 1/2 years of storage. [1]
I suspect that a large portion of these soybeans will be stored with the hope that the market gets better in the future (I've never farmed soybeans. We did wheat and hay). Potatoes and apples are the same way.
For Potatoes, they'll measure for hotspots throughout the year to make sure there's not rotting going on in the core, but assuming that doesn't happen, they can be stored for a very long time in giant potato piles. Hay is weird. Fermentation is actually a desirable thing because it releases nutrients (and the cows LOVE it). It makes storage super easy. I've had multi-year old hay bales that we've fed to cows.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/farming/comments/113t3nx/how_long_c...