Thursday April 09 Ag News - Combining Pesticide Training with Cancer Education - Agronomy Decisions Using AI - Iowa Farm Act passes IA House - CHS Q2 Results - Fertilizer prices Jump Higher - and more

What happens in Texas...
Alfredo DiCostanzo, Nebraska Beef Systems Extension Educator

Does not stay in Texas. Borrowing from the slang which refers to when someone misbehaves somewhere (such as in Las Vegas) knowledge of the deed remains in that location. Yet, for the purpose of this column, what might happen in Texas will not just affect Texas but other states including ours.

Responding to the threat of New World screwworm (NWSW) in November of 2024, USDA paused imports of feeder cattle from Mexico. A regional resumption of imports occurred about a year ago, but these efforts were stopped as discovery of infected cattle (and other livestock and pets) closer to the US border occurred in May of 2025.

Fast forward to early 2026: beef industry news outlets reported on renewed interest to resume imports of live feeder cattle from Mexico. As of this writing, advocates of resumption of feeder cattle imports suggest that specific ports of entry furthest from the eastern states in Mexico where live screwworm infestations continue (Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas) be considered for phase reopening.

Whether you are in support of this idea or not, two questions come to mind: 1) How is the absence of feeder cattle affecting the Texas cattle feeding industry? and 2) What are the long-term

implications of a reduction in feeder calf supply (domestic and imported) on Texas agriculture?

Unfortunately, answers to the first question are beginning to surface. Late in February, Lubbock Feeders, a 50,000-head capacity feedlot in Lubbock, TX, made the decision to close. Reasons cited for the closure included the loss of feeder cattle sourced from Mexico. Mexican sourced feeder cattle made up to 70% of the total cattle on feed at Lubbock Feeders.

Overall, the suspension of imports of feeder cattle from Mexico resulted in a net loss of 1.1 million feeders, which is the average number of feeders imported from Mexico during the years 2022 to 2024. This short supply of feeder cattle became more significant as domestic feeder calf supply is also at an all-time low.

High-priced feeders and high-priced grain (delivered in Texas) are real pressures on feedlot economics for Texas cattle feeders.

As Texas cattle feedlots cope with economic pressures greater than those experienced by feeders in states closer to grain production, the implications will affect the rest of the country, particularly grain-producing regions.

With an average inventory of 2.5 million head of cattle on feed and a turnover rate of 2, Texas cattle feeders are expected to market 5 million head of grain-fed cattle a year. At average on-feed gain of 650 lb and a conversion ratio of corn grain to beef of 6 lb-to-1 lb, Texas cattle consume 400 million bushels of corn. Texas corn growers produce around 200 million bushels of corn. Therefore, Texas is a net grain importer to fulfill the needs of its feedlot industry.

If the Texas cattle feeding industry disappears, corn derived from approximately 200 million bushels will have to find other uses. This is the equivalent to the production of 1.1 million acres of corn (about one tenth of the corn-producing area of Nebraska).

Other major economic impacts will also be felt by the Texas and US economy. Assuming a labor ratio of 1 person to each 1,000 cattle on feed, unemployment resulting from closure of Texas feedlots may affect 2,500 individuals.

The alternative: resuming imports of Mexican feeder cattle may not result in a speedy recovery for Texas feeders. Demand for feeders to be finished in Mexico is strong. Alternatively, if the NWSW fly is discovered in Texas (or any other southern US state), health regulations for cattle derived from those states will immediately tighten.

Therefore, it appears that there is no easy answers, but what might happen in Texas will not affect Texans only.



A new path to cancer prevention for Nebraska’s agricultural community

In Nebraska, agriculture isn’t just an industry; it’s a way of life. With more than 44,000 farms and ranches across all 93 counties, the rural and spread-out nature of agricultural communities makes it challenging to reach them with health information. But one program is changing that. 

Pesticide Applicator Training connects with thousands of Nebraska producers each year, teaching safe chemical handling and reducing exposure risks. Now, it’s also helping bring cancer prevention and screening education directly to people who need it most.  

Rural Nebraskans face higher cancer risks and often have less access to preventive care. Traditional outreach doesn’t always reach these communities, but trusted programs do.  

A new partnership between the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center and Nebraska Extension embeds cancer education directly into pesticide training sessions, making it easier to reach producers in a meaningful, practical way.  

“We’re bringing cancer prevention and screening education directly to people in settings they already trust,” said Rachael L. Schmidt, APRN-NP, assistant director for Cancer Education and Screening, Community Outreach & Engagement. “By meeting individuals where they are, we are expanding awareness and connecting more Nebraskans to lifesaving screening.”  

The connection is a natural fit.   

“Pesticide Applicator Training is fundamentally about risk reduction,” said Hannah Guenther, statewide rural health Nebraska Extension educator and Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center representative. “Expanding that conversation to include cancer helps them recognize that there are multiple ways to reduce health risks—whether that means wearing proper protective equipment in the field or talking to a healthcare provider about recommended screenings.” 

Since January 2026, the program has reached more than 600 agricultural producers across Nebraska, with programs integrating short, 5–15 minute education segments covering cancer screening guidelines, and resources for follow-up care. 

Early feedback is encouraging. “Educators reported that the content fit seamlessly into existing sessions, and several participants said they plan to discuss cancer screenings with their healthcare provider,” Guenther said. “We are hopeful this approach will lead to increased awareness, earlier detection, and ultimately improved health outcomes in rural Nebraska communities.” 



WINNING CONTEST ENTRY SHOWS AI’S AGRICULTURAL POTENTIAL

Nipuna Chamara, research assistant professor in biological systems engineering at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, won a category of the 2025 Testing Ag Performance Solutions competition using artificial intelligence to make decisions for him.

The takeaway? AI can be an invaluable agricultural tool when paired with farmers’ experience and know-how.

“If a person like me, who’s not a farmer, can use AI to win a competition like this, imagine what a seasoned farmer, with decades of experience and knowledge, could do with this tool,” Chamara said.

The TAPS program is a university-led, real-world competition where participants manage actual plots of corn and soybeans for an entire growing season. The three judging categories are highest yield, highest profitability and highest input use efficiency. Participants make many of the same decisions for their TAPS plot that they make at home — such as seed selection, irrigation, pest control and grain marketing — but in a low-risk environment where they can experiment without harming or diminishing crops on their working farms.

Each team is given a plot or plots of land on which to grow their crops. Extension educators provide the teams with data, such as moisture levels and soil health, after which teams decide how much and when to water, fertilize or make other such choices. The results are tallied in September, and the winners are announced in January the following year.

In 2025, the TAPS fields were located at the Research, Extension and Education Centers in North Platte and Mead, Nebraska.

“The average grower has about 40 growing seasons to improve their operation,” said Chris Proctor, a Nebraska Extension educator who helps manage the contest. “As soon as the seed goes in the ground, they’re kind of locked in for that year. Within TAPS, last year we got 116 teams competing, so that’s 116 growing seasons’ worth of decisions all in one. So, in some ways it accelerates the learning iterations that are possible within the season.”

After a conversation with his doctoral supervisor, Yufeng Ge, and teaming up with faculty with expertise in nitrogen management, irrigation management, agronomy and agricultural economics, Chamara first entered the competition in 2024, using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to help him make decisions. He found decision-making in a real-world environment difficult and not practical with the AI models available.

At the time, ChatGPT had no real-time access to data, so Chamara and his team entered all the data manually, uploading information on crop type, soil health, moisture, weather and more. They then asked the AI simple close-ended questions about whether it was a good time to plant, fertilize, etc., and followed the recommendations given.

Proctor said he and the other competition managers didn’t see the use of AI as cheating and were more curious than anything.

“At that time, the excitement was building around AI, and I still don’t know that all of us really had our heads wrapped around what it was,” Proctor said. “At that point, it was much more conceptual than practical. AI claimed to do a lot of things, so let’s just see what happens. I didn’t have an expectation that it was just going to run away with the competition.”

That year, Chamara and his team placed seventh in the yield category.

For the 2025 competition, Chamara grew three corn plots and one soybean plot and immediately noticed two key differences with AI:
> It had become more advanced, pulling in real-time data from the internet on which to base its recommendations, even considering recent news about commodity price fluctuations.
> It already had data from the previous year’s competition to serve as a foundation for adding the current year’s information.

To capitalize on these advances, Chamara and his team would upload new data, such as the weekly grain report, and ask close-ended questions with a specific objective in mind.

The AI would then pull information from the internet, combine it with Chamara’s new and old data and recommend certain actions followed by an explanation of its reasoning. For example, as Chamara was competing in the profitability side of the contest, the AI suggested he lock in prices for his corn early because, at the time, market prices for crops were fluctuating drastically with the introduction of new tariffs.

Chamara said that relying solely on AI does run risks, as it can sometimes base recommendations on faulty or incorrect information found online, and he stressed the importance of turning to reliable sources such as grain reports and extension publications. However, he said, countries like the United States and Canada have a long history of collecting agricultural data and sharing it openly with the public, which benefits AI decision-making.

At the conclusion of the 2025 competition, Chamara and his team earned first place for the highest corn yield in the Mead sprinkler corn competition. They recently published the research outcomes in the journal Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture.

For the 2026 competition, Chamara said he would like to focus on profitability and sustainability and see how AI fares. He also would like to see an app that lets farmers connect AI to the sensors around their farm, automatically uploading real-time data daily to provide them with the most up-to-date information on how to accomplish agricultural goals.

“I think the growers that have more robust digital records and data sets can train AI to be more useful because now, all of a sudden, it gives a context to AI,” Proctor said. “If it has that backlog of reference, that’s where I think the power is.”

Chamara said if farmers are willing to try using AI, they already have the domain knowledge to couple with it.“Like a person who has Google, or a person who uses the library, we can use AI as a tool to make us more powerful in processing data,” he said.



Naig Applauds Bi-Partisan House Passage of Iowa Farm Act

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig today applauded the Iowa House of Representatives’ strong bi-partisan passage of the Iowa Farm Act, House File 2748, by a vote of 81 to 8.   

“Thank you to members of the Iowa House for their strong bipartisan vote in support of the Iowa Farm Act,” said Secretary Naig. “I appreciate the leadership of Rep. Derek Wulf for floor-managing the bill and Speaker Pat Grassley for his continued support—both farmers who are constant champions for agriculture. This kind of bipartisan backing sends a clear message about the importance of agriculture to Iowa’s economy, communities, and future.” 

About the Iowa Farm Act 
The Iowa Farm Act is a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive legislative package introduced by Secretary Naig. It is designed to support Iowa farmers, strengthen rural communities, and position the state’s agricultural economy for long-term success. The bill reflects priorities identified by farmers, agribusinesses, and stakeholders and delivers practical solutions to today’s challenges while preparing for the future. The legislation expands economic opportunities by supporting value-added agriculture, agritourism, and new market access. It also provides targeted tax relief and regulatory clarity to reduce costs, promote fairness, and support farm succession. The package invests in the next generation of agriculture by prioritizing beginning farmers and strengthening the rural veterinary workforce. Additionally, it enhances Iowa’s biosecurity and foreign animal disease preparedness while protecting farmer confidentiality during emergencies. Finally, the Iowa Farm Act modernizes state operations and improves efficiency to better serve farmers, agribusinesses, and rural communities. 



Long-time CHS Board member and former chair takes on new leadership opportunity

CHS Board of Directors member and former chair Dan Schurr, a farmer from eastern Iowa, has resigned his position on the CHS Board, effective March 30, 2026.

Schurr has accepted a seat on the Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company board of directors. In connection with his new role, he has stepped down from the CHS Board prior to completion of his term in December 2026. CHS and Nationwide have collaborated in serving cooperative owners with trusted products and services for many years.

“We thank Dan for his two decades of commitment to CHS and the cooperative system,” says CHS Board Chair C.J. Blew. “His vision, insights and dedication to shared success have been instrumental in CHS growth and strength. We know he will continue to be an advocate for cooperatives and for CHS.”

Schurr was first elected to the CHS Board by CHS members in Region 7 in 2006. He served as Board chair from 2017 through 2025. His Board seat will remain vacant until the 2026 CHS Annual Meeting, when CHS members from Region 7 elect a new Director to a three-year term. Region 7 includes Iowa and Missouri and nine other states to the south and southeast.



CHS reports second quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings

CHS Inc., a global agribusiness and the nation’s leading cooperative, today released results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2026. The company reported a net loss of $147.1 million and revenues of $8.4 billion for the quarter that ended February 28, 2026, compared to a net loss of $75.8 million and revenues of $7.8 billion in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025.

Key highlights for second quarter fiscal year 2026 financial results:
    In our energy segment, significantly higher expenses for renewable energy credits (RINs) and unrealized hedging losses were offset by strong operational execution and improved crack spreads.
    Continued market headwinds in grains, including weaker soy and canola crush margins, were partially offset by increased corn export volumes and stronger retail corn margins.
    Decreased agronomy sales volumes in crop nutrients and crop protection product lines, due to a weaker U.S. farm economy, were partially offset by continued strong performance from our CF Nitrogen joint venture.  

“CHS continues to deliver strong operational performance for our owners, despite the significant ongoing global industry challenges that are reflected in our financial results," said Jay Debertin, president and CEO of CHS Inc. “We will remain focused on cost discipline, operational excellence and supplying our owners with the inputs they need during planting season, as well as executing against all of our fiscal 2026 priorities."

Starting in fiscal year 2026, the company's financial segments have changed to align with its new end-to-end product-line operating model. 

Energy 
This segment includes our refined fuels, propane and lubricants product lines. Energy reported a pretax loss of $133.6 million for the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, which represents a $54.2 million decrease versus the prior year period. This reflects significantly increased RINs expenses, as well as commodity market fluctuations and their impact on hedges, partially offset by higher crack spreads and an improved sales mix of refined fuels products. 

Grains
The grains segment primarily includes our corn, oilseeds, wheat and specialty grains product lines. The pretax loss of $17.9 million represents a $9.5 million decrease versus the prior year period and reflects:
    Lower oilseed crush margins, partially offset by the timing impact of temporary mark-to-market adjustments associated with commodity derivatives and by higher corn export volumes and stronger retail corn margins. 

Agronomy
This segment includes crop nutrients, crop protection and CF Nitrogen. A pretax loss of $11.5 million represents a $0.1 million decrease versus the prior year period and reflects:
    Decreased wholesale and retail crop nutrients margins.
    This decrease was partially offset by continued strong performance from our CF Nitrogen investment, driven by higher urea and UAN prices. 

Corporate and services
This segment includes CHS Capital and CHS Hedging, as well as our Ardent Mills and Ventura Foods joint ventures. The pretax loss of $1.9 million represents a $16.4 million decrease versus the prior year period, due to lower equity method earnings from our joint ventures.



DTN Retail Fertilizer Trends

Retail fertilizer prices continue to jump, in some cases by double-digits -- one of them by more than 30%. According to prices tracked by DTN for the last week of March 2026, all eight of the major fertilizers are higher compared to last month for the second week in a row. Five of the eight major fertilizers had considerable price increases compared to prior month. DTN designates a significant move as anything 5% or more. 

Urea led the way higher again as the nitrogen fertilizer was a whopping 34% higher compared to last month. The liquid fertilizer had an average price of $838/ton. Both UAN28 and UAN32 were 21% higher than a month ago. UAN28 had an average price of $496/ton, while UAN32 was at $564/ton. Anhydrous was 18% higher than the prior month and had an average price of $1,060/ton. 10-34-0 was 8% more expensive than last month and had an average price of $714/ton.

The remaining three nutrients were slightly higher in price compared to last month. DAP had an average price of $863/ton, MAP was $917/ton and potash $489/ton.

On a price per pound of nitrogen basis, the average urea price was $0.91/lb.N, anhydrous $0.65/lb.N, UAN28 $0.89/lb.N and UAN32 $0.88/lb.N.

All eight fertilizers are now higher in price compared to one year earlier by the following amounts: potash, 6%; 10-34-0, 10%; MAP and DAP, 12%; UAN32, 34%; anhydrous and UAN28, 38%; and urea, 48%.



Weekly Ethanol Production for 4/3/2026

According to EIA data analyzed by the Renewable Fuels Association for the week ending April 3, ethanol production bounced 3.8% higher to 1.12 million b/d, equivalent to 46.87 million gallons daily. Output was 9.3% higher than the same week last year and 10.3% above the three-year average for the week. The four-week average ethanol production rate decreased 0.3% to 1.10 million b/d, equivalent to an annualized rate of 16.91 billion gallons (bg).

Ethanol stocks ticked up 0.2% to 26.1 million barrels. Stocks were 3.6% lower than the same week last year and 0.3% below the three-year average. Inventories built across all regions except the East Coast (PADD 1).

The volume of gasoline supplied to the U.S. market, a measure of implied demand, softened 1.4% to a 5-week low of 8.56 million b/d (131.65 bg annualized). Demand was 1.6% more than a year ago but 1.1% below the three-year average.

Refiner/blender net inputs of ethanol declined 0.9% to 895,000 b/d, equivalent to 13.76 bg annualized. Net inputs were 2.6% more than year-ago levels and 1.4% above the three-year average.

Ethanol exports swelled 65.0% to an estimated 203,000 b/d (8.5 million gallons/day), the largest weekly volume since February. It has been more than two years since EIA indicated ethanol was imported.