February, 2012
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Join Us At the Commodity Classic
Tomorrow I head out from warm and sunny Yakima, Washington (after 4 inches of snow the night before) and travel to Nashville, Tennessee for the Commodity Classic. I will be walking the trade show on Friday and on Saturday, Nick Houle from our Minneapolis office will be giving a keynote speech on estate planning from […]
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The $5 Billion Corn States
The USDA has reported that there were five corn states in 2011 that generated over $5 billion in corn sales: Iowa – $14.5 billion Illinois – $12.3 billion Nebraska – $9.4 billion Minnesota – $7.0 billion Indiana $5.3 billion These five states generated 63.4% of all corn sales in the US for 2011. The states […]
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Production Down, Income Up in 2011
We posted a couple weeks ago about production for almost all of the major crops in 2011 being down from 2010. Even though, production was down, income for most of these crops seems to be up in 2011 from 2010. A recap of the major crops are as follows: Corn $76.5 billion up from $64.7 […]
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MF Global Loss (If Any) Will Be Deducted in 2012
We got the following question from one of our readers: ” I made profits on commodity trades in 2011. The amount was $20,000. The 1099 from MF Global shows $20,000. However, I have received only $14,000 and probably will not get the entire $20,000. How much do I have to pay tax on?; the $14,000 that I […]
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Update on 2021 Apple Production
It is not too often that we do a post on fruit ag news, but we just recently came across an article in the Good Fruit Grower which is based in my home city of Yakima, Washington. In the article, a Washington State agricultural economist predicted the apple production in the state for 2021. For […]
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Congress Extends 2% Payroll Tax Cut Till End of 2012
Congress late last week passed a new bill (and President Obama has already indicated he will sign it) to extend the 2% payroll tax cut from February 29, 2012 till the end of 2012. This means that your employee’s FICA contribution will remain at 4.2% for the rest of the year instead of the schedule […]
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Don’t Forget Farm Income Averaging
With the March 1 farm tax return deadline rapidly approaching, I want to remind our farmers to make sure they actively review their tax return to see if farm income averaging will save them money this year. Farm income averaging allows you to smooth out your income tax liability for the current year if this […]
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Almost All Crop Productions were down in 2011!
With another year of low corn production, but high acres, did this negatively affect the total production for other crops in 2011. The USDA just released the final numbers on US crop production for 2011 and I thought I would take a look. The major findings are as follows: Corn production down 1% to 12.4 […]
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Be Careful When You Value Farm Conversation Easements!
Many farmers want their farm to continue as farmland as long as possible. In many circumstances, they will donate an easement to a conservation charity that will restrict the land to farming and not allow it to be developed. In these cases, the tax laws allow the farmer to take a deduction for the “value” […]
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Some Interesting Dairy Cow Facts
We like to poke around in the Census of Agriculture report that is issued every five years. You can always find something interesting in these reports. For today, I wanted to review some of the information about dairy cows from the 2007 census. For that year, there were a total of 69,890 farms that were considered […]