Patio Pondering: Closed-Door Decisions, Open-Air Consequences

This morning is classic January in northeast Indiana—gray, chilly, and more dreary than dramatic. My coffee is in a travel mug because I’m headed to the Fort Wayne Farm Show to listen, learn, and take the temperature of agriculture heading into 2026.

If you’re in the ag world, you already know what yesterday’s WASDE and Crop Production reports did; they blew up more than a few marketing plans. The numbers were not mild, they were not expected, and they did not match what many farmers saw in their own combines last fall. You could feel the frustration ripple through group texts, merchandiser calls, and coffee shop conversations almost instantly.

But this Pondering isn’t about WASDE. It’s about what WASDE represents.

For crop producers, those reports aren’t academic, they drive markets, margins, and whether a farm has a fighting chance next year. Yet the people who will absorb the financial impact are the same ones who have zero input into the process. No visibility, no participation, no ability to offer ground-truth context. Just numbers from behind a closed door that redraw the playing field overnight.

And that dynamic isn’t unique to agriculture.

A lot of people live under systems that evaluate them, score them, or financially impact them without ever asking for their data, context, or perspective. Think about annual performance reviews written without observing the work. School scores based on tests no teacher designed. Corporate targets set by executives who never talk to customers. Different industries, same dynamic: decisions that affect your world made without your input.

Farmers aren’t rattled because reality changed—they’re rattled because reality was redefined without their participation.

So I’ll leave you with this: where are decisions being made behind closed doors that dictate your world; and what have you done lately to pry those doors open?