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Thursday, September 3, 2026
Farm Press ThemeAgribusiness · Business & Production
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Farm Press ThemeAgribusiness · Business & Production
Home / Agribusiness

Agribusiness

Agribusiness examines the commercial structure surrounding production: cooperatives and elevators, processors and input suppliers, farmland ownership and rental rates, agricultural credit, and consolidation among seed and chemical firms. Analysis explains how each affects a grower's margin. Aimed at farm owners, managers and the lenders and advisers working with them.

Coverage of cooperatives, processors, input suppliers, farmland ownership and agricultural lending, the commercial structure around food production.

Agribusiness

What an H-2A worker actually costs an operation

The 2025 H-2A Adverse Effect Wage Rates averaged roughly $17.43 per hour nationally, per the Department of Labor data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, but wages are only about half the true cost once housing, transport, and compliance are counted.

Isabel Duarte
Harvest knives and work gloves resting on a full crate of vegetables
Agribusiness

Cash, crop-share, and flexible farmland leases compared

The national average cropland cash rent was $161 per acre in 2025, per USDA NASS, but the lease type a operator and landowner choose determines who carries the price and yield risk, not just who writes the check.

Isabel Duarte
Three-column diagram comparing cash, crop-share and flexible leases
Agribusiness

What irrigation water really costs on the High Plains

Across the Ogallala region, the aquifer, not the commodity price, is the cost driver: every foot the water table falls adds lift cost and inches producers closer to a decision about what to grow.

Isabel Duarte
Irrigation manager inspecting sprinkler nozzles on a center pivot
Agribusiness

Where precision ag pays in row-crop operations

Guidance and autosteer cleared the ROI test on roughly half of U.S. row-crop acres; the harder question is which of the technologies stacked on top of them earn their subscription.

Isabel Duarte
RTK GPS base station antenna standing at the edge of a field