June, 2010
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Lots of Corn – But We Need It
The USDA released their June acreage report today and the corn and wheat market rallied substantially based upon this report. The actual amount of expected corn acreage came in about 1.6 million acres less than the trade expected and the amount of corn on hand was about 300 million bushels less than expected. Backing into […]
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Is Farmland Too Good of an Investment
I have written many times about how farmland has been a good investment for at least the last 10 years or so. Most of this data has been gathered from sources directly related to farming, however, I have started to notice a trend about reporting on farmland as an good investment in mainstream sources such […]
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Some Interesting Wheat Production Facts
Kansas State University has a site called ag manager info and there is always some interesting tidbits that they have on the site. They recently posted an article on the world wheat market supply and demand trends. I thought I would recap the article with what I found interesting. For the current year, total acres […]
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Working Capital – Lifeblood of a Farm
Dave Kohl is an ag economist who writes the Road Warrior of Agriculture for Corn and Soybeans Digest. His columns are usually very insightful regarding economic issues related to agriculture. Back in March, he had an article regarding working capital being the financial shock absorber for farms and business. Working capital is the excess of […]
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Foreign Banks Continue to Expand into US Agriculture Lending
TierOne Bank of Lincoln, Nebraska was closed by the FDIC on June 4, 2010 and then sold to Great Western Bank of Sioux Falls, South Dakato which is a subsidiary of National Australia Bank, a large agricultural lender that has expanded its farm-based lending in the United States and appears ready to continue to expand […]
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Go West Corn Belt
As the old saying goes “Go west, young man, go west”, the corn belt will probably be expanding at least 300 miles to the west over the next few years. As part of the two-day agricultural symposium held in Omaha last week, this was one of the central themes of the meeting. Drought resistant corn […]
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$6 Billion Cuts in Crop Insurance Program
As we have discussed in this blog before, the Obama administration is going forward with $6 billion in cuts to the crop insurance program. This will end up slashing agent commissions that have been as high as 30% of premium. Under the new plan, these commissions will now be capped at around 18% of premiums […]
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Food Demand Drives Farmland Prices
I try to skim a few of the major Mid-West farm cities and the Omaha World-Herald recently had an article on how food demand is driving farmland prices higher. There was a regional conference in Omaha sponsored by the Federal Reserve of Kansas City. The meeting brought forth various good nuggets of information about the […]
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Owning Farmland Has Provided a Good Return
One of our readers sent me an e-mail yesterday regarding an article posted by www.farmgate.com regarding the return on farmland investment from 1970 top 2009. This post was based upon the research done by Iowa State University. Over the years farmland investment have yielded a very competitive rate of return compared to other investments. However, […]
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Russia is Going for Dominance in Wheat
I had a post from about two weeks ago about the USDA predicting that Russia would become a larger exporter of wheat than the US by about 2019. Bloomberg Businessweek just wrote an article on how Russia is fighting for World Dominance – in Wheat!. The article recaps that Russia is able to sell their […]