Reviewed September 2026 against USDA NASS Agricultural Prices, USDA AMS Hay Market News, and USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026.

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Alfalfa, Lead Ore & Biochar Prices Per Ton

US alfalfa hay averaged $198 per ton in June 2026 per USDA’s monthly Agricultural Prices report, up from $185/ton in April 2026. Lead ore itself has no published US mine-gate price per ton — what exists is a global refined-metal forecast near $2,000 per metric ton for 2026 and USGS production data for the domestic industry. Bulk biochar for soil use ran about $400 per ton in 2024, a separate figure from the biochar carbon-credit market, which traded closer to $155/metric ton at the end of 2024.

Those three numbers come from three different reporting systems — USDA’s farm-price survey, global metals-forecasting firms plus USGS mine statistics, and industry biochar trackers — and each updates on its own schedule. The rest of this page walks through each one, where it’s published, and how to pull a fresher number than the one printed here.

Alfalfa Hay Price per Ton: Current US Figures

Alfalfa hay is the one commodity here with a genuine, regularly updated US price series, because USDA tracks it at two different resolutions.

• 📊 Monthly national average: USDA NASS’s Agricultural Prices report put US alfalfa hay at $185/ton in April 2026 and $198/ton in June 2026 — a $13/ton move in two months, published via USDA NASS Agricultural Prices.
• 📉 Weekly spot/auction average: USDA AMS’s Hay Market News reported a national average alfalfa auction price of $191/ton for the week ending July 6, 2026, sourced directly from regional hay auctions rather than the farm-price survey — see USDA AMS Hay Market News, report ams_2885.
• 🗓️ Most recent spot reading: a compilation of that same USDA AMS data put the national average alfalfa spot price at $179/ton for the week of August 24, 2026, via HayWire’s USDA-sourced hay price tracker.

Read across those three points and alfalfa moved from $185 (April) to $198 (June) to a $191 auction average (early July) to $179 by late August — a normal seasonal pattern where new-crop cuttings widen supply through summer and spot prices soften from the June peak. None of these figures is “the” alfalfa price; NASS’s monthly number reflects actual farm-level transactions across the reporting month, while AMS’s weekly number reflects that week’s auction lots in reporting regions, so they will not match exactly even in the same period.

Quality grade matters more than any single average can capture: NASS and AMS both report by grade (Supreme, Premium, Good, Fair) and by state, and dairy-quality Supreme alfalfa routinely prices well above the fair-average feeder hay that pulls the national number down. If you’re pricing a specific load, go to the regional AMS report for your state rather than the national average.

Lead Ore Price per Ton: What’s Actually Published

Here’s the gap worth naming directly: there is no published US mine-gate price per ton for raw lead ore. Lead is sold as concentrate under smelter contracts with grade-based deductions and treatment charges that are negotiated bilaterally and not publicly reported. What is published is the global refined-metal price and US production data, and the two together tell you most of what a lead ore price forecast actually needs.

• 💲 Global refined lead price forecast: Procurement Resource put the 2026 global lead metal forecast at roughly $2,000 per metric ton, via Procurement Resource’s lead price trends.
• ⛏️ US production value: the recoverable lead content from ore mined in the United States was valued at $650 million in 2025, per the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026.
• 🌍 Global output forecast: the same USGS report forecasts global lead mine output at 4.67 million metric tons for 2026, a 2.2% increase over 2025.

If you need an actual per-ton figure for budgeting a specific deposit, back it out yourself: take the USGS-published $2,000/MT refined lead forecast, apply your ore’s assay grade (percent lead by weight), and subtract the smelter’s treatment and refining charges, which your offtake negotiation — not a public database — will set. A 5% lead ore grade at $2,000/MT refined price implies roughly $100/MT of contained metal value before deductions; treatment charges for lead concentrate typically run into that figure directly, so the netback varies by contract far more than by market. This is the honest limit of what’s public: USGS and metals-forecasting services report the refined-metal side, not the ore-purchase side.

Bulk Biochar Price per Ton: Soil Amendment vs. Carbon Credit

Biochar pricing splits into two markets that are frequently conflated, and reading them together instead of as one number is the whole trick.

• 🌱 Bulk biochar soil amendment: average market price ran about $400 per ton in 2024, per an industry survey covered by Cloverly’s biochar business guide.
• 💳 Biochar carbon credits: a separate, much smaller-dollar market — average biochar carbon credit price was $131 per metric ton in 2023, rising to roughly $155/metric ton by the end of 2024, an 18% year-over-year increase, per Carbon Credits’ 2025 biochar market tracking.

These are not competing quotes for the same product — the $400/ton figure is what a buyer pays for physical bulk biochar delivered as a soil amendment, while the $131–$155/MT figures are what a carbon-credit buyer pays per ton of CO2-equivalent sequestered, tracked through a registry rather than a bag of material. A grower buying biochar to spread pays the soil-amendment price; a project developer monetizing the same biochar’s carbon sequestration sells credits separately, often to a different buyer entirely. The 18% year-over-year rise in credit prices through 2024 reflects tightening supply of verified biochar carbon removal credits, not the cost of the material itself.

What’s not published: consolidated USDA production-volume statistics for the US bulk biochar market. Supplier-level data exists but is fragmented across individual producers, so there is no single “US biochar output” figure to cite the way NASS reports alfalfa tonnage. If your use case needs a production-capacity number, that has to come from directly surveying suppliers in your region rather than a national dataset.

Price Comparison Table & How Each Updates

Calculator: Landed Cost per Ton, Delivered to Your Site

Published averages rarely match what lands at your gate once freight and grade adjustments are added — use this to convert any of the base prices above into your actual delivered cost per ton.

Assumptions: freight is modeled as a flat per-mile, per-ton rate you supply — it does not account for fuel surcharges, minimum load fees, or backhaul discounts. The grade adjustment is a simple percentage applied to base price, not a graded scale. This excludes storage, handling, and any taxes; use it for a first-pass comparison, not a final quote.

Satellite-Based Detection for Ore and Soil Inputs

Before committing capital to lead ore exploration or large-scale biochar feedstock sourcing, the underlying resource question is the same: where is the material, and how much is there, before you drill or survey on foot? Satellite-based mineral detection applies Earth observation analytics to flag high-potential ore zones — including lead-bearing formations — before ground crews are deployed, cutting exploration risk on projects where a per-ton price forecast is only useful if you actually have tonnage to sell against it.

For a visual sense of how this maps subsurface structure, explore satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping, which renders target zones for lead ore, gold, and other minerals as geospatial layers rather than flat maps — useful for validating a deposit’s scale before contract negotiations that will set your actual per-ton netback.

Gold Identification Project in Peru

Video Library: Exploration & Mining in Practice

The clips below cover satellite-assisted exploration workflows referenced above, applied across different regions and target minerals.

Gold Rush Arizona: History & Modern Gold Mining Revival

Ghana Gold Discovery: How Satellite Tech Pinpoints Hidden Deposits Accurately!

Satellites Spark a New Alaska Gold Rush

Satellite Mineral Exploration | AI Soil Geochemistry Uncovers Copper & Gold in British Columbia

Modern Gold Rush: Inside the Global Race for Gold | Documentary

How Gold is Extracted from Mines | Full Guide

Australia’s Gold Mining Revolution: Tech & Sustainability

Verification Checklist: Keeping These Numbers Current

Every figure on this page has an expiration date built into its own reporting schedule. Use this checklist instead of trusting a static print date:

• ✅ Alfalfa monthly trend: pull the latest Agricultural Prices report, released mid-month, at data.nass.usda.gov.
• ✅ Alfalfa weekly spot price: search “hay” for your region’s report at USDA AMS Market News reports — regional numbers diverge from the national average by grade and location.
• ✅ Lead production and forecasts: USGS republishes the Mineral Commodity Summaries every January for the prior year, at pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals — check for a newer edition than the 2026 summary cited above.
• ✅ Biochar pricing: no fixed publication calendar exists; recheck the same industry trackers cited above for their most recent annual update, and treat any figure over 18 months old as stale given the market’s 18% year-over-year swing through 2024.

Frequently Asked Questions

Contact & Next Steps

Whether you’re budgeting hay procurement, evaluating a lead ore deposit, or sourcing biochar at scale, pairing published commodity data with location-specific resource intelligence keeps your numbers defensible.

• 💬 Get Quote: Submit your mining requirements
• 📧 Contact Us: Connect with our data solutions team
• 🗺️ Map Your Mining Site: Start today with our digital platform

Revisit the sources linked throughout this page directly — USDA NASS and AMS update on fixed schedules, and USGS republishes its mineral summaries every January, so the freshest number is always one click away.