If you can, you’re rotating beans and corn every year. (“Roundup ready” of course)
Wheat is on the marginal drier land. Not that they couldn’t plant wheat there but beans are way more profitable and so they don’t.
The plains is by definition more arid, marginal land a step up from pasture/grazing.
A lot of traditional wheat/sunflower/barley/oats has gone over to beans and corn bc roundup and GMO.
On my family’s farm I don’t remember the last time we had wheat crop but that was our staple for like 50 years.
It depends on what you mean by "beans". The Palouse agricultural region is famously one of the highest yielding wheat and legume producing regions in North America.
Nah. Wheat isn't profitable if you look at it in isolation, but it is still net advantageous to have in the rotation.
> (“Roundup ready” of course)
Nah. IP soys aren't as attractive as they once were, granted, but the premium is still compelling enough to grow some.
Relevant example from today:
"The commodities guru who warned about silver falling now, is saying the hantavirus could do the same to oil"
Click later:
Guy is just hedging against losses.
I am genuinely starting to wonder how much of the trade swings are from algo trades reacting to headlines ( and subsequent ones reacting to content;p ).
If the closure persists then no doubt other sources can ramp up to fill the void, but it's going to be too late for this season. Some Asian farmers have already chosen not to bother planting rice crops since the increase in fertilizer (urea) cost has meant they'd be losing money.
Fuel prices are also impacting imported produce prices.
For supplemental fertilizer you buy though you are correct.
"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.
Both drought and the fertilizer shortage (which, as the article notes, was too late to effect planting decisions but DID impact the costs, and thereby decisions on the applied quantities, of nutrients for the winter wheat crop this year) are impacting winter wheat yields.
But there's a very weird underlying sentiment on HN where many people seem to directly or indirectly jump whenever they can to downplay the existence of climate change. Sometimes, they are emboldened by articles like this which intentionally use misleading headlines.
You're completely right, though, that in this instance, soy beans were mostly focused on because of consumer trends and less fertilizer need. Wheat is just an expensive crop right now. Also, soybeans would actually be less resilient to drought which furthers your point re: the article headline.
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.
Even worse, oil dependence is a competitive liability --- not an advantage.
AI is energy intensive. And more expensive, carbon based based energy is a competitive disadvantage.
A competitive disadvantage in AI is an economic issue --- which ultimately translates into a National Security issue.
China leadership understands this. USA leadership is clueless.
Many of these causes imply spending copious money that they are less well disposed to stuff in their pockets or give as tax breaks to their benefactors.
Others make good political ammunition for their uneducated base.
These are the people who roll coal
It's not the drought per se, it's input costs. Farmers are favouring crops that need less nitrogen and potassium.
Commodities have responded accordingly.
A year ago China stopped buying soybeans from the US is seems ("China Bought $12.6 Billion in U.S. Soybeans Last Year. Now, It’s $0." - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/business/china-soybean-sa...), was that resumed, or who are all these new soybeans going to? Is it all for national use instead of export?
The US also uses a lot of soy beans internally. Prices are down, but farmers are still selling soybeans and with careful management are making money.
And to stop misinformation in its tracks:
> A March 2021 meta-analysis published in Reproductive Toxicology concluded that neither soy protein nor isoflavone intake significantly affects reproductive hormone levels in men. Analyzing data from 41 studies and 1,753 participants, the researchers found no statistically significant effects on testosterone or estrogen regardless of intake dose or duration.
so Gemini says, link - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33383165/
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 megacorp farmers in response because they simply can't survive.
But who? Compared to 2024, 2025 had almost half soybean exports it seems (https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/soybeans), I'm guessing most of the difference was China basically stopped buying soybeans.
But it's a huge difference, yet production seems to be ramping up? I don't understand why they'd do that when the exports are going down?
And the chart you linked appears that exports for non-china countries is basically static.
Were I to guess what's going on, but we'll see when the 2026 data comes in, is that soy farmers are likely storing a good portion of their bean harvest. Some will still have contracts that keep them farming. I suspect that many have switched over to other crops.
On the margins. However most farmers consider their soil health and long term plans. All good farmers (especially the mega corps) will intentionally plant most crops not based on what they expect out of the market next year, but what their soil needs. Most fields will not produce well if you don't consider what was grown on it last year and in turn what you want to produce next year. A few fields (millions of acres worth, but still only a few) there are options and those will adjust, but for the vast majority you have to follow a long term plan or your soil will fail and bankrupt you long term. Even the fields that do have options, it is just this year, and next they will have to return to a long term plan with no option. That where I live you have go [corn, corn, soybeans] or [corn, soybeans, corn], but [corn, corn, corn] is not an option. (I'm not aware of anyone doing two years of soybeans but maybe it happens)
I've never worked at a megacorp farm, but my observation is that the majority of farmers aren't thinking like this. Granted it might be different because the crops around me which are most commonly grown are wheat, barley, and hay. IDK the effects of soybeans/corn on soil and it's possible they have a much more pronounced effect. For wheat, barley, hay, most the farmers I know will plant it YoY and use fertilizer to counteract soil deficiencies.
Crop rotation, AFAIK, is mostly employed to reduce the need for fertilizer.
It definitely is a problem because farmers tend to over-fertilize which can cause nasty problems the runoff water.
I also expect this will likely become something a lot more farmers start to practice as fertilizer prices spike.
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...
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
> Last week I posted about how hay buyers and sellers were frozen, waiting for each other to move first. Here's an update....
looks generally correct. On the 2025 CO hay report you can see that last year in this period, there were 22k tons sold. This year, there were 9750 tons sold. Last year[1], the week before (4/28/2025) there were only 400 tons reported sold.
Seems like there is an annual inflection point that causes prices to settle, and it wouldn't be in the report linked just yet. Meanwhile, if you do a news search for hay prices, you can see plenty of articles from different sources discussing how the drought is driving prices higher, so it appears to be at least a common discussion point.
[1] CO Hay 2025: https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/r207t...
Thanks for sharing!
I guess you meant something more like "shows a causal relationship"?
Because they're already correlated, which I thought was the point..
Are there different grades of soybean?
The most common use is crush the beans, and collect the oil feeding the rest to pigs. If you read the ingredients at the grocery store, soy bean oil comes up a lot. Soy bean oil is also often used in diesel engines after processing.
They're mild, a little nutty, but also a little waxier in texture than most beans (similar to edamame in that way, but closer to other beans than edamame when they're cooked from dried).
I still haven't found a great use for them other than as a slightly weird substitute for other beans, because there's not a lot of recipes around for them (because they historically took like 3 hours to cook), but I personally enjoy them just fine.
or tofu, soy sauce, miso, natto, tianmianjiang, a thousand other things made from soybeans
As much as it bothers me, I do feel like I've had a healthier diet since cutting out soy. It's not the soy itself which makes these things unhealthy but rather that it's used as a filler in processed foods.
I'll be honest, though, I do miss Nutella.
Edamame is limited to special varieties that are harvested before ripening, which isn't the soybeans those supplanting wheat will be growing. You're probably thinking of tofu, natto, or something in that vein.
Not just technically. It is a relatively common food. A fair bit of it is crushed (i.e. turned into cooking oil). But it is also a product used in a number of processed foods, tofu, etc. Granted, it does seem to be eaten less commonly in the USA, but is more often used in Asian cuisines.
> Are there different grades of soybean?
All crops have different grades. Poor weather conditions is the most likely reason for a downgrade.
Edit: I'm being downvoted because someone found a source that says 3% of winter wheat in Montana is irrigated.
My point still stands, while yes some percentage of wheat is irrigated it is extremely uncommon.
> Leonard’s operation near Goodland is a diversified operation with a mix of dryland and irrigated acres in addition to a small cow-calf operation. Encouraged by his PlainsGold seed rep, he entered the yield contest for the first time in 2022. His entry came from a field planted to certified seed wheat that followed pinto beans, which provided some moisture profile.
> “Our soil will hold about 1.8 inches of moisture per foot,” Leonard said. “So, if we have six feet of subsoil, we have some gas in the tank. We had some of that last year, but we don’t have that this year.”
> From planting until harvest, the field only received 6.2 inches of moisture, so Leonard pumped another 10 inches of water to help the wheat crop along. He also furtigated nitrogen through the pivot to further boost yields. The widespread drought conditions last growing season meant it was too dry for even the weeds to grow, so he did not apply any fungicide.
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https://api.mountainscholar.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/9...
Page 6:
> The four major grain crops grown in Kansas (corn, soybean, grain sorghum and wheat) have experienced upward trends in yield (Figures 7 – 10). Corn yield has had the most dramatic increase for both irrigated and dryland production with irrigated corn yield improvements of approximately 2.5 bushels/acre for the each year of record, This result is more than twice the dryland rate of 1.1 bushels/acre. The average irrigated yield increase is 0.59 bu/ac, 0.60 bu/ac and 0.31 bu/ac for soybean, grain sorghum and wheat respectfully. Irrigated yield increase trends have been larger than for dryland.
Page 8 figure 10 shows the yield trends for wheat - both irrigated and dryland since 1974.
E.g.
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/considerations_for_raising_irr...
https://extensionpubs.unl.edu/publication/ec731/2009/pdf/vie...
https://ucanr.edu/blog/uc-small-grains-blog/article/irrigati...
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/considerations_for_raising_irr...
https://waterquality.colostate.edu/documents/factsheets/0055...
edit: cloud seeding too.
Let's take Kansas... the largest producer of wheat in the US. https://www.statista.com/statistics/190376/top-us-states-in-...
Kansas wheat crop down 38% from last year https://youtu.be/QjrhAXzEGDc
Kansas cannot run on desalination plants ... there's no salt water. The gulf coast of Texas is 1000 miles away.
While aquifers do regenerate (Groundwater levels in the Kansas High Plains aquifer see first overall increase since 2019 https://kgs.ku.edu/news/article/groundwater-levels-in-the-ka... ) I'm going to point out that news article has seven years of declines previously.
The aquifer that Kansas draws upon is the Ogallala Aquifer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer ) and you can see the rate of depletion at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/nation... - there are spots in Kansas where the groundwater dropped by 150 feet from before it was tapped with deep wells to 2015.
Yes, most of the earth is covered by water. Getting that water to Kansas and Nebraska and North Dakota, however, is a problem.
In fact, this is the only remaining way I know of to more or less 'homestead' federal land in a way that results in a permanent deed. The rest of the homesteading type stuff was revoked back in like the 70s or 80s.
https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/Desert%20Land%20Entr...
I'm not sure if the BLM has relaxed their discretion under Trump.
The Colorado River compact came into effect in 1922 and I'm almost surprised literal fist fights haven't erupted over it during the modern negotiations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trenton_Pickle_Ordinance_a...
The age of a law or regulation is likely a strong indicator for its relevance in modern times, especially if it’s regarding something quite niche.
There are only 3 countries that do: Bahamas, Maldives, and Malta.
Other countries that depend heavily, but not completely: Qatar, Kuwait, UAE.
Desal isn't useful for anything but a stop gap
Desalination uses far more power than AI ever would.
This is where capitalism drives humanity off a cliff.
There are countries in middle east like UAE, Saudi arabia etc. which rely on desalination but they are relying it for the clean drinking water, not for the food generation. They import almost 90% of their food iirc.
The amount of energy required to desalinate all water and the environmental impacts to get that energy would literally be quite catastrophic and I am not even sure if it would be even feasible and food prices would literally skyrocket or food would simply be produced even more less by magnitudes of order.
https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/forage-and-hay
https://wits.worldbank.org/trade/comtrade/en/country/QAT/yea...
I hope the “riots” are in the form of voting.
"The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith)
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
The CGP Grey youtube short is an entertaining summary of the books subjects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
>in the form of voting.
The current US representatives were voted into, out-of, and back into power.
It is interesting, but will likely remain stable. =3
Doesn't escape despotism cycles, and just makes a country a worse place to live.
Historically, without respect for people you disagree with, it only gets worse for everyone. This lesson was simply forgotten by many. =3
20% of the remaining global supply comes from Iran, which has its own issues of drought and war.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is another big factor here as fertilizer prices have massively gone up. Diesel is more expensive too. Many crops this planting season (in the northern hemisphere) haven't been fertilized like they would normally and it's too late now so that will absolutely impact food prices later this year. The Global South will be disproportionately affected.
Lastly, the continued Russia-Ukraine war continues to impact Ukraine's wheat crops. Ukraine is (or was?) often called the "bread basket of Europe" because it was such a significant wheat grower and exporter.
We (the world) are genuinely going to have much more expensive food prices later this year and, in some places, there will be genuine famine.
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.
If this was meant to manipulate Trump into specific behavior, it is a masterful long play seeing as how this report is published in roughly the same way for over 50 years.
I'm honestly scratching my head over here because this is bordering on being deliberately obtuse. Chinese purchases of US agricultural products is a high-level plank of any US-China trade deal and a very likely agenda item on any trade summit.
This also isn't new. What do you think trade agreements are, exactly? My favorite example is a US trade dispute with Australian wheat producers in the 2000s. US wheat is subsidized. Australian wheat basically isn't but is still cheaper. So, to avoid WTO repercussions, the US said Australian wheat was a biohazard risk and that's why it couldn't be imported.
This dispute was ultimately resolved as part of a wider agreement that created a new visa (E3) specifically for Australians wanting to work in the US.
Tariffs too are a tool of and a bargaining chip in trade agreements.
It is, but is generally post facto instead of pre facto, which may be why you don't recognize it as such? In the US, subsidies are given by covering a portion of crop insurance premiums. When crops fail, the insurance covers the losses. Whereas Australia waits until crop failure occurs and then provides assistance to affected farmers "bailout"-style.