Ken Franklin farms corn, soybeans, and wheat in Christian County, in the center of Illinois. At the Commodity Classic in late February, someone asked him about moisture.
"The situation is dire. Our subsoil moisture is nonexistent right now and our topsoil moisture is pretty dry. In fact, I top dressed wheat the other day and I didn't have to wait for frost, it was that dry."
That detail is the one that stays with me. Top-dressing wheat means spreading fertilizer on a winter wheat crop already in the ground. Normally in central Illinois in February you'd wait for the ground to freeze so you can drive equipment across it without making ruts. Franklin didn't have to wait. The ground was dry enough to drive on in the middle of winter. A man standing in a field, knowing something is wrong by the feel of it under his boots.
Over 80 percent of Illinois is under some level of drought, with another 15 percent abnormally dry. Parts of 19 central counties are in extreme drought. The city of Sullivan declared a water emergency after the water table dropped 15 feet. Statewide precipitation from October through January came in under seven inches, about four inches below normal.
Greg Anderson, who farms in northeast Nebraska, put it plainly: "Over the last six months, I've had less than six inches of precipitation and that includes rain and snow. Last week we had about four inches of snow and that was the most snow we've had all winter."
April is weeks away. The soil profile is empty.
March 15 was the deadline for crop insurance purchases. Franklin made that decision already. What's new this year is that the USDA's Risk Management Agency eliminated the buy-up option for prevented planting coverage. In previous years, a farmer like Franklin could pay an additional premium for higher coverage if weather kept him from getting seed in the ground. That option is gone for 2026.
The prevented planting buy-up option was eliminated for 2026 — the same year severe drought may keep farmers out of their fields. The safety net for exactly this scenario got thinner right when the scenario arrived.
Brett Grauerholtz, who farms in north-central Kansas, is watching the mountains. "We've seen very low snowpack in the Mountains and like it or not it runs off into our rivers and affects us in Kansas," he told Brownfield Ag News. He's reading a system. Snowpack in the Rockies, river levels in Kansas, soil moisture in his fields. All of it pointing the same direction.
The USDA's March 31 Prospective Plantings report will be the first survey-based measure of what farmers actually intend to plant. Early projections suggest soybeans gaining acres at the expense of corn because the economics favor them. For Franklin, who grows all three, that calculation runs through every field on his operation. But projections assume a normal level of prevented planting. Nothing about this spring is normal.
Franklin and Anderson and Grauerholtz all face the same decision in the next few weeks: whether to plant at all. You commit seed, fuel, fertilizer, and labor to a crop that needs rain you can't guarantee. If the rain comes, you're fine. If it doesn't, you've spent money you won't get back, and the insurance you bought in March covers less than it used to. If you don't plant at all, you collect a prevented planting payment that's a fraction of what a harvested crop would bring. Either way you're gambling. You're just picking which loss you can survive.
On March 21, Grand Island, Nebraska, hit 98 degrees. Des Moines hit 91. Monthly records, both of them, in the third week of March. Earlier that same month, temperatures dropped below zero in western Nebraska. For winter wheat already stressed by drought, a hard freeze followed by record heat can finish what dry soil started.
Sandy Lunderman, who farms in southwest Minnesota, said his operation needs spring rains to recharge the soil profile. "It's been a pretty nice open winter," he said, "but there is not a lot of moisture and snow."
A pretty nice open winter. The season he needed didn't come and that's how he talks about it. Farmers talk about weather the way pilots talk about turbulence. Plainly, practically, because what else are you going to do. The wheat's in the ground. The insurance deadline passed. The planting window opens in a few weeks whether the soil is ready or not.
Franklin will plant. Grauerholtz will plant. They'll make adjustments, shift acres, hedge where they can. The calendar still runs the operation even when the calendar is wrong. You go when it's time to go and hope the season catches up.
I figure that's the bet. You can absorb it if the rain doesn't come.