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Founded in 1913, Nebraska Farmers Union is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the quality of life and economic well-being and of family farmers and ranchers, and their rural communities.

According to a news release sent later by the White House, Talus Ag will build 20 modular ammonia manufacturing units ac...
10/22/2026

According to a news release sent later by the White House, Talus Ag will build 20 modular ammonia manufacturing units across 11 locations in seven states, including two in Nebraska. Deploying all 20 manufacturing units is expected to cost $270 million, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture providing nearly $100 million in financing. It’s not clear where or when those facilities would be built in Nebraska or anywhere else.

Talus had been seeking to build an ammonia production facility near Hartington in northeast Nebraska, but the city of Hartington reported in January that the company had withdrawn a zoning application.

Monolith, a company that makes carbon black at a manufacturing plant near Lincoln, had at one point been planning to produce green ammonia for fertilizer, using a $1 billion loan from the federal government, but President Donald Trump canceled the loan as part of an elimination of financing for clean energy projects. Monolith has since abandoned the project and is planning to build a data center instead.

During his visit to North Platte on Thursday, Vice President J.D. Vance announced a $1.3 billion investment in fertilizer production, including in Nebraska.

Fernandez said he has received questions on why OPPD still plans to retire coal at its aging plant, the North Omaha Stat...
10/22/2026

Fernandez said he has received questions on why OPPD still plans to retire coal at its aging plant, the North Omaha Station, if capacity for economic development is constrained.

North Omaha Station’s refuel and retirement has been in the works for over a decade, and the plant is not an option for future available capacity, OPPD board member Eric Williams said. It doesn’t provide enough capacity to meet the incoming demand.

“We’re talking about the future of Nebraska, these are thousands of megawatts. That one (North Omaha Station) is just a few hundred,” Fernandez said.

Coal plants like North Omaha Station, which began operating in the 1950s, might have been critical power generation for electric grids when they were first built, but that’s not necessarily the case today.

To meet the growing demand and to keep costs low, OPPD is looking at building more natural gas and renewables. The current popularity of natural gas has constrained the equipment supply chain, which means it could take utilities much longer to build. While renewables face some up-front cost increases, they remain the lowest-cost energy source to operate.

However, OPPD has struggled to bring these projects online in Nebraska as some communities have turned them away. As a result, that has cost OPPD potential available capacity.

“Everyone is saying no, and then we end up in a really bad place,” Fernandez said, noting community leaders who have rejected renewable generation have then asked for more power capacity to attract new economic development.

The Omaha Public Power District has enough available power capacity for current customers and typical residential and commercial growth. But it faces hard choices as data center demand and other strains on the grid make it potentially tougher to attract larger customers. A business leader says thous...

“This is the second round of emergency aid this year to address losses that were largely foreseeable,” said National Far...
10/22/2026

“This is the second round of emergency aid this year to address losses that were largely foreseeable,” said National Farmers Union President Rob Larew in a statement. “While this assistance will be helpful for some farmers as they manage a costly harvest, trade disruptions, and rising fuel costs tied to conflict abroad have put family farmers in a difficult position, and one-time payments can’t provide the stability they need to plan for the future.”

Larew continued, “We also have questions about how this program will serve specialty crop growers, who have been asked to submit their own cost data with no clarity yet on whether or how they’ll be covered.”

“The need for repeated emergency aid is a clear sign that the farm safety net is failing family farmers. We need to provide long-term certainty and investment in diversifying our fuel sources with renewable options, not a cycle of ad hoc relief. That’s why Congress must commit to passing a strong farm bill that gives family farmers the stable footing they need.”

Late Monday evening, the Trump administration announced the Harvest Fuel Relief Program that will provide farmers with $8 billion as a response to heightened diesel costs during the harvest season. Here’s a closer look at reactions from farmer groups across the industry.

Kearney Mayor Jonathan Nikkila said citizen engagement is an involved process, but it is key to creating city regulation...
10/22/2026

Kearney Mayor Jonathan Nikkila said citizen engagement is an involved process, but it is key to creating city regulations.

“I'm really thankful for the citizen push, because if they hadn't pushed us at that moment at that time we wouldn't have been ready. Instead, we were able to set the expectations for what we wanted from that kind of development in our town,” Nikkila said at the Nebraska Wind and Solar Conference panel. “Instead of reacting, we were the ones explaining what we expected from them.”

More than a dozen Nebraska counties have placed moratoriums on new data centers as a response to the backlash. But other counties are rethinking zoning rules, possibly to allow for data center construction.

Three Nebraska data center leaders discussed responsible data center development, water and energy usage and community pushback Wednesday at a renewable energy conference panel.

Mirza: More than half of governor races this year don't have a debate between major party candidates. Do you think that'...
10/22/2026

Mirza: More than half of governor races this year don't have a debate between major party candidates. Do you think that's an anomaly? Do you think debates will come back into fashion, and it's just the way that candidates change? Or do you think debates are gone for good?

Hansen: I hope that that's not a sign of the future, but I think it's probably a sign of campaign managers somewhere taking a more risk-averse approach, saying, “How much do we have to gain here? How much do we have to lose? We've spent way too much money on messaging to have our candidates screw up and make their delivery, or their comments, counterproductive.” So rather than run the risk of putting it all out there in the line where everybody can see in live time, in real time, it's a risk-averse sentiment, I think, which is unfortunate.

Mirza: There are a lot of candidates that go on social media. They'll comment, they'll tweet, they'll post, what have you. Do you see those sorts of online debates as replacing the live, in-person debate? Do you think that there's no replacement for seeing someone face-to-face, or do you think that that marketplace of ideas might just be moving to a different sphere?

Hansen: Well, when you're putting a camera on yourself, you're also doing it in a fashion where you're not engaging with your opposition. You're also doing it in a very organized kind of way and controlled kind of way. And by the way, if it doesn't really work out very well, why, you just hit the delete button.

It performs an additional way to get to know the candidate, which I think is useful. But I also think that there is no real substitute at the end of the day for having that time-honored process of candidates getting together, shaking hands before and after a debate, and appearing together in the same stage and fielding questions that they might not know are coming — and giving the chance for the public to see how they respond.

This year, more than half of all gubernatorial races in the U.S. will not feature a debate between two major party candidates, including in Nebraska. John Hansen, the president of Nebraska Farmers Union, has been going to debates for more than half a century. He sat down to talk about how the pivota...

Brian Maher, Nebraska's education commissioner and chair of the School Financing Review Commission, said while the annua...
10/22/2026

Brian Maher, Nebraska's education commissioner and chair of the School Financing Review Commission, said while the annual report will give the Legislature “some things to mull over” during the coming session, the group's work is not done. “In some ways, our work is just beginning,” he said.

At its simplest, TEEOSA provides equalization aid to school districts if a district's needs exceed its resources. For the 2025-26 school year, 50 of Nebraska's 245 school districts received equalization aid. Those districts accounted for 55.6% of the state's public school students, according to the Nebraska Department of Education.

Currently, school districts receive an allowance for distance education and telecommunication costs. The annual report recommends eliminating the allowance from the needs side of the formula. The commission also recommends streamlining how school districts with students with limited English proficiency access additional funds and modernizing the formula's poverty allowance.

The state's School Financing Review Commission met to adopt its annual report with recommendations for the Nebraska Legislature on improving the state's K-12 school funding formula.

Nebraska should rely more on wind and solar energy to meet an unprecedented increase in electricity demand, speakers at ...
10/21/2026

Nebraska should rely more on wind and solar energy to meet an unprecedented increase in electricity demand, speakers at a conference said on Tuesday.

Driven by data centers and other industries, demand for electricity is expected to nearly double in the next 10 years, Steve Purdy of the Southwest Power Pool told the Nebraska Wind & Solar Conference. But unlike Iowa and South Dakota, which get about 60% of their electricity from wind and solar, Nebraska gets only about 32%, said Jeff Clark of the Advanced Power Alliance, an energy trade association.

NeFU President John Hansen is also Committee Chair of the conference.

Nebraska should rely more on wind and solar energy to meet an unprecedented increase in electricity demand, speakers at a conference said on Tuesday.

The Lancaster County Data Center Task Force discussed goals, current regulations and heard from community members.“The L...
10/21/2026

The Lancaster County Data Center Task Force discussed goals, current regulations and heard from community members.

“The Lancaster County Data Center Task Force will evaluate the size, siting, and setbacks of data centers in existing zoning classifications and assess potential impacts on energy use, water consumption, noise levels, visual impact, and other considerations contained in the amendment proposed by the applicant,” David Cary, the city’s Planning Department director, said.

Board members range from Lincoln Chamber of Commerce CEO Jason Ball and John Hansen, president of Nebraska Farmers Union, to John McNally, the governmental affairs manager for Nebraska Public Power District. There’s also five community representatives who were selected by the Lancaster County Board.

The Lancaster County Data Center Task Force met for the first time Tuesday afternoon. The group of 12, with one member missing, discussed goals, current regulations and heard from community members.

National Farmers Union President Rob Larew said the organization was questioning how the relief program would help speci...
10/21/2026

National Farmers Union President Rob Larew said the organization was questioning how the relief program would help specialty crop producers who were asked to “submit their own cost data” but had “no clarity yet on whether or how they’ll be covered.”

Larew said the assistance will be “helpful for some farmers” but that rising fuel costs have put family farmers in a “difficult position.” “One-time payments can’t provide the stability they need to plan for the future,” Larew said in a statement. “ … We need to provide long-term certainty and investment in diversifying our fuel sources with renewable options, not a cycle of ad hoc relief.”

In Iowa, the farmers union president was more pointed against the Trump administration and said the “Band-Aid response” would not fix the problems caused by “trade wars and a military war that have put farmers on the front line of the consequences of those policy choices.” Iowa Farmers Union has endorsed Iowa’s Democratic candidates in the upcoming election.

“We need genuine efforts to help farmers now while fixing the real causes of our current situation,” Aaron Lehman, Iowa Farmers Union president, said. “We need to conclude the war without sacrificing our farmers’ bottom lines. We need to end the monopoly stranglehold on agricultural inputs. We need to become more energy independent by developing sustainable domestic alternatives.”

Farmers will be eligible to receive one-time payments from USDA to provide relief for high fuel and input costs.

This statement comes as conflict in the Middle East and disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz drive a new...
10/21/2026

This statement comes as conflict in the Middle East and disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz drive a new surge in energy and fertilizer prices, compounding pressure from tariffs, trade tensions, supply chain disruptions and increasingly frequent extreme weather. The organizations warn that farmers are struggling to maintain liquidity heading into the fall planting and input-purchasing season.

“Family farmers in the United States and across the G7 are facing the same squeeze: input prices driven up by war, trade disruptions and a handful of corporations that control the fertilizer, seed and crop protection markets,” said NFU President Rob Larew. “Farm organizations around the world are united in calling for real competition in input markets, stable and fair trade relationships, and policies that ensure farmers earn a fair price for what they produce. Our governments need to treat farmers as key partners to addressing these challenges.”

WASHINGTON – As G7 agriculture ministers met in Paris, National Farmers Union (NFU) yesterday joined leading farmers’ organizations from across the G7 countries in a joint statement calling on governments to confront rising input costs, strengthen fair and competitive markets and work with farme...

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1305 Plum Street
Lincoln, NE
68502

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Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 12pm

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(402) 476-8815

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