For Sheridan Skala, Owatonna, Minnesota (Steele County, family farm heritage) Tuesday, July 21, 2026. Filed by The MI Farm AI Desk. Weather, Owatonna, MN
What this means for today: Mostly sunny, with a high near 77. Northwest wind 15 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Source: NOAA National Weather Service point forecast for Owatonna, MN, pulled this morning. Hour by Hour, the day ahead
Source: NOAA National Weather Service hourly forecast and station observations, pulled this morning. Grain and Livestock, corn, soybeans, wheat, cattle
Source: Chicago Board of Trade. Cal's Market ReadOvernight, corn slipped about 1 cents; and beans steady. Recent trend, over the last 5 sessions, corn has firmed and beans have firmed. That is the backdrop your cash bid is moving against. Here is our read on why corn slipped about a penny while beans held steady. Honestly, the facts do not point to one clean cause, so we would name the two likeliest as quiet positioning ahead of an uncertain farm bill and plain lack of fresh demand news. The Senate Farm Bill looks shaky per Hoosier Ag Today, and with no USDA report due, folks had little reason to chase either side hard overnight. Stocks point higher into the open, S&P futures up about 0.2 percent. A firmer tape eases the borrowing and input-cost mood your lender watches, though it does not move your cash bid by itself. Cal Wall Street, yesterday's close
WHY IT MATTERS FOR YOUR FIELDS Decision DeliveredYour decisions for today and the week ahead:
What to Watch Today
From Cal's News DeskThe 10 stories that moved across the wires since yesterday's Brief, sourced, dated, and verifiable. Each one carries Cal's review, the same one the news page shows, with a link to read it straight from the source. 1. Senate Farm Bill Faces Collapse After GOP Leadership Upheaval and SNAP Standoff
Chairman John Boozman of Arkansas may not even get a committee markup for his "Farm Bill 2.0" before the August recess, because the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham and the hospitalization of leader Mitch McConnell have robbed Republicans of the full attendance they need to move it without Democrats. Ranking member Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota says her party stands united against GOP changes to SNAP food aid, and even Sen. John Fetterman, once eyed as a swing vote, calls SNAP a top priority. To win support Boozman already dropped the pork industry push to overturn California's Proposition 12, cut SNAP exemptions and pesticide deregulation, and narrowed the bill to expanded crop insurance, higher loan caps, and rural broadband and infrastructure. This matters because family farm bankruptcies jumped 46 percent in 2025, and a planned rescue of a 10 billion dollar emergency bridge payment plus permanent year round E15 ethanol is now stuck in the same logjam.
Read the full article. Hoosier Ag Today, Mon Jul 20, 2026 6:15 PM CT 2. Feeding High-Oleic Beans Featured at Enchanted Dairy Field Day on Aug. 14
On Friday, Aug. 14, Enchanted Dairy near St. Cloud, Minnesota, will host a free High-Oleic Soybean Field Day showing off on farm roasting technology and how these beans can boost dairy profits. The star attraction is an advanced oil jacket roaster run by a computer network and PLC that automatically alerts the farm if bean temperatures drift outside the ideal range, with designer Lyndel Martin and roaster manager Austin Schmitt on hand to answer questions. Lunch is on the sponsors, but you must register by Aug. 10 at z.umn.edu/EnchantedBeans, and more details are at fourstatedairy.org. The same roundup also flags a new livestock plus crops SARE infographic, a $3.9 million USDA funded I-FARM project at the University of Illinois, seven U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award winners, and a USDA forecast that corn and soybean margins should climb back toward $4 and $10.
Read the full article. Morning Ag Clips, Tue Jul 21, 2026 4:45 AM CT 3. Opinion: The farm bill should support independent farmers, not corporations
Congress is now shaping the final farm bill, and the Senate's June draft left out the Save Our Bacon Act, a measure that would have gutted California's Proposition 12 and hundreds of other voter approved animal welfare and public health laws. The authors, independent livestock farmers from Virginia, argue that decades of policy have funneled money and infrastructure to industrial operations while leaving small and mid size farms, who are 85 percent of American farmers, with pennies. They warn the results are dangerous, pointing to crowded confinement feeding disease outbreaks like bird flu and screwworm, plus more than 158,000 farms shuttered since the last farm bill. Showcasing their own pasture raised heritage pigs, Nubian goats, and poultry sold straight to neighbors, they say humane, sustainable farming works and they are calling on Congress to fund the independent producers, not the corporations.
Read the full article. Agri-Pulse, Mon Jul 20, 2026 8:36 PM CT 4. Lean Hogs
October lean hog futures pushed to a fresh high for the move early in the session before slipping to a slightly lower close, though the picture still leans in the bulls' favor. Last week delivered a very strong weekly finish, a positive technical signal, while cash hogs firmed up by roughly a dollar. Analysts at The Hightower Report say they give the bulls the edge even after yesterday's setback, pointing to steady demand and supportive momentum. With USDA supply and demand figures out last Friday shaping the pork outlook, this market could mean better returns for anyone feeding hogs alongside the corn and beans.
Read the full article. Tri-State Neighbor, Mon Jul 20, 2026 5:19 PM CT 5. Trump imposes 50% tariffs on Canadian alcohol, dairy and automobiles
President Trump signed three executive actions Monday slapping 50 percent tariffs on Canadian alcohol, dairy, and automobiles, using a rarely touched Great Depression era law called Section 338 that lets him hit countries deemed to be discriminating against American commerce. The White House carved out exemptions for potash, that key fertilizer ingredient, along with fish and critical minerals, and the tariffs kick in 30 days from now. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the move punishes Canada for retaliating, pointing to provinces yanking American booze off shelves and to cheese quotas that would otherwise saddle U.S. producers with roughly 245 percent duties. The fight has bounced through several legal challenges, with the Supreme Court striking down earlier tariffs in February, and it even follows Trump threatening more penalties over Canadian wildfire smoke drifting into East Coast skies.
Read the full article. Agri-Pulse, Mon Jul 20, 2026 4:57 PM CT 6. "In the Weeds" Glyphosate News Roundup: July 21, 2026
The Supreme Court handed Bayer a major win on June 25, ruling that federal pesticide labels override state failure-to-warn claims, a decision that should dismiss and block the billions in Roundup cancer lawsuits that have dogged Monsanto for nearly a decade. This is welcome news for no-till farmers who lean on glyphosate to kill cover crops and manage herbicide-tolerant corn and soybeans without plowing. But just five days later, Bayer stunned the very farm groups that backed it in court, filing petitions on June 30 seeking antidumping duties of up to 446.47 percent on Chinese glyphosate imports to protect its own domestic production, which supplies about 60 percent of the U.S. market. Groups like the National Corn Growers Association and American Soybean Association now accuse Bayer of betrayal and warn the tariffs could spike your input costs, pointing to a Texas A&M study that found similar fertilizer duties cost growers 6.9 billion dollars, with a preliminary trade ruling expected in roughly two months.
Read the full article. No-Till Farmer, Mon Jul 20, 2026 11:00 PM CT 7. Iowa Corn Announces Board Election Results
Iowa Corn revealed the winners of its 2026 Board of Directors elections for both the Iowa Corn Growers Association and the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, with the new directors set to begin serving their districts on September 1, 2026. The Growers Association side handles grassroots policy work, lobbying state and federal officials as the collective voice for more than 7,000 corn farmer members. The Promotion Board side, a tradition dating back to 1978, oversees how your corn checkoff dollars get invested into research, new value added corn uses, and building markets at home and overseas. Both groups share one mission, creating opportunities for long term Iowa corn grower profitability, so these fresh faces will directly shape where your check off money and policy voice go next.
Read the full article. Morning Ag Clips, Tue Jul 21, 2026 5:00 AM CT 8. Heroes learn farm rescue
At a recent Farm Rescue Day in Barneveld, Wisconsin, volunteer firefighters and emergency medical crews trained hands on with real farm machinery, practicing how to free simulated patients from augers, hay implements, and overturned tractors using airbags, wood blocks, and saws. Fire Chief Bud Schlimgen of the Barneveld-Brigham Fire Department showed responders how a power take off works and how to safely shut off power to equipment attached to a tractor, knowledge that can mean life or death at a real accident. Wisconsin dairy farmer Kyle Thompson shared the story of his own recent farm accident with the responders, a reminder of all the near misses farmers tend to forget. The event, run by the Barneveld-Brigham department alongside neighboring crews, gives first responders firsthand familiarity with farm equipment so they can save lives when accidents strike without warning.
Read the full article. Tri-State Neighbor, Tue Jul 21, 2026 1:00 AM CT 9. 'It Always Gives Back': Lafayette 4-Her Shares Life Lessons Learned Through County Fair Projects
Indiana 4-H member Spray created a sports poster featuring the state's historic high school gyms, including the New Castle Fieldhouse, the world's largest, Case Arena in Frankfort where "Blue Chips" was filmed, and the famed Hoosier Gym in Knightstown from the movie "Hoosiers." She told Hoosier Ag Today her favorite is the Hoosier Gym because she got to play there with her own basketball team, and she values how judging lets kids explain their work and build communication skills. Spray stresses that you don't need a farm or livestock to join, since projects range from posters and photography to sewing, baking, and electric, so there's something for everyone. Her biggest takeaway is that 4-H always gives back through pride and hard work, and she'll be showing her pigs Wednesday night, so stop by your county fair to support 4-H while there's still time.
Read the full article. Hoosier Ag Today, Mon Jul 20, 2026 7:51 PM CT 10. Video of the Week: No-Till Field Gets 9 Inches of Rain Overnight
Ross Bishop stood in his no-till wheat field on August 10th after 9.1 inches of rain fell overnight, and the water running off was crystal clear instead of the chocolate milk brown you would see washing off tilled ground toward Lake Michigan. After 30 years of no-till and cover crops, Bishop says his yields keep climbing every year while he burns less fuel and skips the back-breaking rock picking and tillage he no longer has the ambition for. A prairie strip sits in the background of his fields, part of a system he credits for keeping his soil in place and the environment healthier. It is a real-world look at how conservation practices hold up under a punishing downpour, and worth watching in the full Conservation Ag Update episode.
Read the full article. No-Till Farmer, Tue Jul 21, 2026 12:00 AM CT Cal's ReceiptCal's Receipt is the running ledger of every call this desk made for your farm, what was at stake, whether you followed it, and what it actually saved (or cost). Append-only, and every dollar cites its source. You will find it on your farm Dashboard, on the Farm Services desk. Open the Dashboard from the button at the bottom of this Brief. Today in Farm SafetyMost tractor rollover deaths happen on slopes and near ditches. Keep the rollover protective structure (ROPS) up and the seat belt buckled, together they prevent about 99 percent of rollover fatalities. Slow down on hillsides and keep loaded buckets low. Source: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Cal Local ObituariesNo local obituaries for your area in today's papers. The Coffee ShopToday in Farm History, First grain elevator 1842 / 1856Joseph Dart's steam-powered grain elevator opened in Buffalo in 1842, and by 1856 elevators with mechanical scales had spread to Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. The elevator turned grain from a sacked, hand-shoveled commodity into a flowing river that filled rail cars at dollars per minute. Source: Smithsonian National Museum of American History; Chicago Historical Society. [CAL'S QUIZ]
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in what year?
(a) 1809
(b) 1859
(c) 1866
(d) 1900
Answer at the bottom of the Brief. [CAL'S JOKE]
A weed grew between two soybean rows. The farmer said, "Now I have three crops: corn, beans, and that." His wife said, "What is it?" He said, "Persistence."
The MI Farm AI Desk
Cal "Corn-Bread" Halvorsen, your AI Agronomist and Editor in Chief Quiz Answer(b) 1859, November 24. The book underlay all modern plant and animal breeding, including Mendel's 1866 pea genetics rediscovered in 1900, which made hybrid corn possible. Source: Smithsonian Institution; American Society of Agronomy historical review.
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The MI Farm Brief is the independent daily farm intelligence brief that earns zero when you buy inputs. Cal "Corn-Bread" Halvorsen is the editorial persona of the MI Farm AI desk, the AI-orchestrated production team that produces this Brief every working morning. The Monthly Receipt is signed by the Founder, MI Farm AI. Honest. Independent. Loyal. Transparent. The HILT Covenant.
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Signed by Cal "Corn-Bread" Halvorsen, Editor in Chief, The MI Farm AI Desk.