Expect more turmoil and change for the 2026 ag sector

Armed with only the best of prognostication tools, here are the 2026 agricultural stories that people will be talking about. I assembled together a copy of the Sortes Astrampsychi, cattle oracle bones, an educated rooster, 10 pounds of brie cheese slightly past its expiration date, and a bag of dried fava beans. What can possibly go wrong?

Full disclosure: no AI was used in the making of this column. Who needs a computer when you’ve got cattle bones? In no particular order, here are my predictions for the year’s top five ag stories.

The joint review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement

The USMC trade agreement is up for review in July. Under the original agreement, all three nations must agree this summer whether to extend the deal another 16 years. Failure to do so begins a running clock that could terminate the trade pact in 2036.

What the three nations ultimately decide to do has massive implications on trade. Mexico is the United States’ biggest trading partner with goods and services in 2024 estimated at $935.1 billion. Canada is second with goods and services valued at $909.1 billion in 2024. Failure to extend the deal this year will create an untold number of uncertainties for U.S. agriculture. In 2024, Mexico surpassed China to become the United State’s largest agricultural market.

It’s big business. The U.S. agricultural sector will be holding its collective breath as the White House demands changes to the current deal, perhaps targeting market access and agricultural biotechnology.

Failure to extend the USMC trade agreement will likely delay future agricultural investment and create uncertainties. There are six possible outcomes:

Renewal — The three countries extend USMCA through 2042.
Agonized extension — U.S. extracts concessions from Canada and Mexico, likely over tariff rate quotas for agriculture and manufacturing.
Withdrawal — One or more nations evoke Article 34.6 to exit the deal with six months notice. I believe this is highly unlikely, despite U.S.rumblings that it’s a possibility.
Bilateral trade pacts — Should a nation withdraw, expect new short term bilateral trade deals to be enacted to preserve supply chains and market access.
Annual serial reviews — Should one government refuse extension, this summer it will trigger annual reviews beginning in 2027. The current trade agreement remains in force, but likely damages investor confidence. This could very well be Canada and Mexico’s counter to U.S. demands; both nations hoping that in 2029 a new U.S. administration negotiates as a partner and not a bully.
Expiration in 2036 — The nations fail to resolve their differences and the deal ends. Trade oversight for the most part reverts to World Trade Organization oversight and creates significant damage to global supply chains and competition with China.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturns tariff scheme

Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court will more than likely find Trump’s weaponizing tariffs to be illegal. In an executive order issued last April the president, citing a laundry list of laws including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act, claimed he could bypass Congress’s power of the purse and solely issue tariffs on any nation he saw fit. Since then, Trump has played tariff-pokie with the world — putting a tariff in here, taking a tariff out there, and generally shaking the confidence of world governments that rely on the U.S. for trade.

In November, the U.S. Supreme Court held oral arguments in Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, to decide if the White House tariff scheme is legal. Justices were skeptical of arguments put forth by administration lawyers. Bigly.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch implied it would be dangerous to the separation of powers to give the president tariff authority with few strings wondering, “wWhat would prohibit Congress from just abdicating all responsibility to regulate foreign commerce — or, for that matter, declare war — to the president? Congress decides tomorrow, ‘Well, we’re tired of this legislative business. We’re just going to hand it all off to the president.’ What would stop Congress from doing that?”
Justice Elena Kagen indicated the administration’s misuses of the NEA and the IEEPA to seize tariff authority, saying, “If you look at … all the tariff statutes that Congress has passed, I mean, they use language about revenue-raising tariffs and duties and taxes. All the language that does not appear in the statute you rely on.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as well as Justices Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch suggested the White House claim of broad tariff power may violate the major questions doctrine reached in West Virginia v. EPA in the summer of 2022. The justices are grappling whether the NEA and the IEEPA passed by Congress explicitly granted presidents broad tariff power.

Companies are lining up to demand refunds should the court strike down White House arguments.

Meanwhile, the White House has accelerated depositing tariff payments into the U.S. Treasury to make it difficult for companies to get refunds should the court find them illegal.

In oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, “If you win, tell me how the reimbursement process would work. Would it be a complete mess?”

Katyal said his clients should undeniably get refunds. For other businesses, Katyal said it would be “a very complicated thing.”

Barrett’s reaction: “So, a mess.”

A mess indeed with huge implications regarding presidential powers. The president, writing on Truth Social, invoked the Almighty in what he views as a war between good and evil — “Evil, American hating Forces are fighting us at the United States Supreme Court, Pray to God that our Nine Justices will show great wisdom, and do the right thing for America!”

Department of Justice antitrust case against Agri Stats clattering toward May trial

The Department of Justice originally filed its antitrust division complaint against Agri Stats in September 2023, alleging:

“Agri Stats has organized several anticompetitive information exchanges, padding its own pockets while its subscribing processors earn millions by using information exchanged through Agri Stats to suppress competition. Meanwhile, American consumers have paid higher prices for staple food items, including chicken, pork, and turkey. The United States seeks to stop these unlawful information exchanges.”

In a nutshell, the DOJ charges that Agri Stats has violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by illegally providing “anticompetitive information on sales and production that is comprehensive, granular, current and available exclusively to processors.”

Agri Stats has fought the complaint tooth and nail, most recently by both seeking summary judgment against the DOJ and demanding the district judge overseeing the case recuse himself.

Assuming the case moves forward to trial later this year, the DOJ will have a significant mountain to climb to prove Agri Stats was an active participant to fix chicken prices. The DOJ is seeking a May 4 trial date, leapfrogging over a still pending class-action lawsuit against a number of Big Meat processors.

USDA set to execute massive reorganization

In 2019, the Trump administration relocated USDA’s Economic Research Service and National Foods Institutes of Food and Agriculture from Washington D.C. to Kansas City, citing the need to lower operation costs paid by taxpayers, to be geographically closer to stakeholders, and to attract new workers with unique agricultural expertise.

At the time, the upheaval was viewed widely as political retribution for challenging White House messaging on food stamps and the environment.

The relocation weakened both agencies. A 2022 Government Accountability Office report found “USDA leadership may have made a relocation decision that was not the best choice to accomplish its stated objectives.”

Now USDA is planning further relocation. On steroids. By the end of this year, the Agriculture Department wants to send more than half of its D.C.-based staff to five regional hubs in Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah.

In making the announcement last summer, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins regurgitated the same play book used in 2019 — citing the need for taxpayer savings and improved effectiveness:

“American agriculture feeds, clothes, and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the Department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers, and producers we are mandated to support. President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country.”

USDA invited the public to comment on its relocation plan. Not surprising that a majority of stakeholders hate the idea. Of the roughly 14,000 responses not part of organized campaigns, 82% were negative. Just 5% expressed positive comments. A USDA analysis of the responses revealed “stakeholders worry that cost-cutting measures will prioritize efficiency over service quality, undermining public trust.”

If that’s not enough, USDA spent much of last year making drastic cuts to its workforce. An Office of the Inspector General Report found USDA trimmed 18% of its workforce between last January and June. Cuts touched virtually every USDA department:

Rural Development at 36%
National Institute of Food and Agriculture at 35%
Office of Civil Rights at 35%
National Agricultural Statistics Service at 34%
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at 25%
Farm Service Agency at 24%
Agricultural Research Service at 23%
National Resources Conservation Service at 22%
Risk Management Agency at 17%

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee who ordered the IG report, remains extremely skeptical of USDA’s plan:

“We have a half-baked agenda that will almost certainly result here in worse services for farmers and families in rural communities. Coordinated action and influence for rural America and agriculture does not mean just being close to where the producers are. That’s true. We have that with ag, we have 90% of the employees already out in the field. But what you guys are planning on doing or proposing to us is to take that other 10% and break them down and send them to five different hubs, including a state that I would say is not in the top 10 for agriculture, not even close.”

It’s not out of bounds to rightly reason that if USDA succeeds in its relocation plan as visioned, the agency will find itself hamstrung in the aftermath. How quickly the agency will recover is open for debate.

Pesticidepalooza

Big Ag is holding its collective breath over expected EPA and Supreme Court action on two weed killers — glyphosate and dicamba.

Glyphosate

Bayer has been dying the slow death of thousands of paper cuts from successful litigants using state laws to claim federally approved labels on Roundup herbicide failed to warn consumers that usage potentially can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The Environmental Protection Agency begged to differ and seven years ago issued a ruling that it “will no longer approve product labels claiming glyphosate is known to cause cancer,” calling the World Health Organization Internal Agency for Research on Cancer assessment on glyphosate “a false claim that does not meet the labeling requirements of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.”

For its part, Bayer says the FIFRA does not legally allow the company to produce labels that are contrary to the EPA’s verdict on glyphosate.

That should have been the end of the story. But FIFRA also flatly prohibits the sale of any herbicide that is “misbranded” by failure to contain warnings or caution statements that may be necessary to protect health and environment.

Unfortunately for Bayer, state courts across the nation have allowed misbranded lawsuits to proceed. Bayer has already paid out roughly $11 billion to settle about 100,000 cases. Some 61,000 cases are still pending.

But Bayer caught a break last August in Schaffner v. Monsanto Corporation when an appellate court concluded “that the alleged state-law duty to include the Cancer Warning on Roundup’s label (the ‘Pa. Duty to Warn’) imposes requirements that are different from those imposed under FIFRA, and that it is therefore preempted by FIFRA.”

Bayer wasted no time in asking the Supreme Court to agree with that assessment and it has a pending petition for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court. The U.S. Solicitor General is backing Bayer’s legal argument.

A Bayer victory could potentially make all pending glyphosate failure-to-warn litigation mute.

Dicamba

The EPA’s bumbling, stumbling efforts to register dicamba-based pesticides for use on cotton and soybean crops have been slam dunked twice in the federal courts, first by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in 2020 and then the U.S. District Court of Arizona in 2024.

Both courts concluded EPA’s dicamba analysis and research was significantly lacking — failing both to understand some risks or acknowledge others. A twofer casting serious doubts on EPA’s sincerity and motivations about whether the agency is serving the public or Big Ag.

Now EPA is saying it intends to unconditionally register dicamba along with some new restrictions that it pinkie swears will prevent the herbicide from drifting all over the countryside and damaging other people’s property.

In case you’re scoring at home, an unconditional registration is good for 15 years unless it is vacated by a court ruling.

While all this plays out, the clock is ticking for soybean and cotton farmers trying to plan their 2026 input needs. It is highly likely should EPA grant an unconditional registration it will immediately be challenged in the federal courts on an expedited schedule.

There you have it. Five agricultural stories predicted to make headlines this year.