Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The NDSU Extension weekly podcast In the Pod: Soybean Updates delivers timely insights and expert advice on soybean production.
You're listening to In The Pod, Soybean Updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension. It was a mixed growing season for many farmers in 2026. The same holds true for the economics of production agriculture. According to Bryon Parman, NDSU agriculture finance specialist, impacts are felt from the weather, wars, and input costs. Bryon, from a financial standpoint, how has this year's growing season gone?
Bryon Parman:2025 was not a particularly strong year in agriculture. The margins were pretty slim, and we were hoping 2026, we would come in and be able to see some prices rebound. Production costs have kind of remained elevated the last few years. They've they've come off a little, but not enough to offset the reduction in commodity prices. The good news we had heading into the year was soil moisture was in good shape. Planting season went mostly well, didn't have an overly wet or anything, and it wasn't particularly cold planting, so we weren't late. So that was all good. But we had that conflict, drove up fertilizer prices really, really high. I know this is a soybean oriented, but phosphorus prices went up too, and that's a nutrient that that crop uses. And a lot of our producers don't only raise soybeans, so seeing nitrogen costs go up as high as they did was not something that we were hoping to see. But, nonetheless, pretty strong planting season. Then we had, I don't know what you called it, some kind of flash droughts where it just got hot, got dry, the wind blew. If you were in the right spot, you got some moisture now and then, enough to offset it, and things trended pretty well. If you weren't in the correct spot, they just got drier and drier and drier. When you look across the state, it probably yields coming in. I've even heard of producers themselves that on their own farm could see yields that are massive swings from one field to the other. This field got the rain. This field did not. And so the yield variability on one same producer's operation could be vastly different. That's how widespread and spotty this sorta was. Then we saw some price rallies this summer in most commodities, wheat, corn, and soybeans. I'll mention in particular when you looked at where we were to come into the year and where prices kinda shot up there in in September, there were some opportunities through early to mid September and late September where producers had some real chance to lock in some stronger commodity prices that would certainly make the balance sheets of the cash flows for this last year look much better than maybe we were thinking much earlier in the year, in particular, like planting season, you know, the February time period where things were a lot more bleak. That was one bright spot that we saw this season was that price rally September through October, and we're just hopeful that a lot of producers were able to take advantage of that for some of their commodities that they're growing. I guess one of the challenges with the spotty dry season versus rains as we got is how do you actually sell because they may not actually know within their own operation what their yields are gonna look like.
Bruce Sundeen:And now with harvest, farmers have diesel prices to contend with.
Bryon Parman:Exactly right. When you look at diesel prices compared to a year ago when off road diesel was somewhere between $2 and 50 and $2.60 at this time last year, and now it's just over $5, so effectively doubled. And this is the time of year when a lot of these fuels being used. You've got trucks hauling grains or beets or whatever you happen to be harvesting as well as grain carts, and the tractors that pull those are gonna use diesel fuel and combines use diesel fuel. We're right in a period of time where significant amount of that resource is used and prices for it really as high as they've been really ever.
Bruce Sundeen:Bryon, what do you know about the diesel fuel relief program?
Bryon Parman:One of the programs that was proposed is the harvest fuel relief program, which is an $8,000,000,000 one time assistance package. It's funded through the CCC, and FSA will administer it, and that's going to be direct relief to farmers to help try and offset some of the high diesel fuel prices that we're experiencing right now. I believe that one's been approved and going to be administered soon.
Bruce Sundeen:Thanks, Bryon. Our guest has been Bryon Parman, NDSU agriculture finance specialist. You're listening to In The Pod, Soybean Updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension, supported by the North Dakota Soybean Council.