Ag Policy
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Where Are Land Rents Headed?
I am at the University of Missouri Emerging Issues in Agricultural Lending today. I have two speaking sessions, but at the second session this morning, Jim Farrell, President and CEO of Farmers National Company gave a presentation on the trends in land and cash rents. The bull market in farm land started in the fall […]
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EPA and Corps Final Clean Water Rule’s Potential Impacts on Farming
The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers recently published a final rule to clarity the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Why is this important for farming? There are rules within this act that require an EPA permit for all discharges of pollutants to “waters of the United […]
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FSA Has Updated Listing of Irrigated/Non-Irrigated Counties
ARC-CO payments are made based upon the Olympic Average yield for each county on a covered crop-by-crop basis. Normally, all of the production is totaled for the county and then divided by planted acres to arrive at the actual yield for that county. However, if enough of the production in that county for that covered […]
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USDA Announces New “Conservation Client Gateway”
One of the things most dreaded by almost everyone is the trip to the local DMV to get their driver’s license. You walk in the door grab #72 and realize that the current number is #48 and you have a long wait ahead of you. For most farmers, the trip to their local FSA office […]
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Open Year Tax Disclosure Footnotes No Longer Needed
Many of our farm operations prepare financial statements with footnotes. These are usually needed for their bank loans, but in many cases, the farm operation is large enough that they would like to provide good financial information to both their lenders and their owners (even if they are all family members). One of the requirements […]
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What is the Estimate on the 2014 MYA Price
There are two key data points that go into the ARC-CO calculations for the 2014 crop year. First, we have a fairly good estimate of the actual 2014 yield for most of the major crops from NASS. Although these are not final yields (only FSA posted yields will count for ARC-CO calculations), they give us […]
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Crop and Livestock Producers are Opposites
The Kansas City Fed just released their latest Ag Credit Survey and it certainly highlights the contrast between financial conditions for crop and livestock producers. In their second chart of the report, it recapped the percentage of producers who indicate a significant improvement, modest improvement, no change, modest deterioration or significant detonation in conditions from […]
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Where’s Waldo (Paul)?
My children used to like to take a look at the books featuring “Where’s Waldo?”. My four boys would race to see who could find him first (they usually beat mom and dad to it too). Once I started doing more traveling, many of my staff will now ask “Where’s Waldo/Paul?”. So this post will […]
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2015 AICPA Ag Conference
As chairman of the 2015 AICPA Ag Conference, I would like to personally invite all of our readers to this event. It will be held on Monday July 13, 2015 to Wednesday, July 15, 2015 in Indianapolis, Indiana. On Monday, Chris Hesse and myself will do an all-day optional workshop on farm taxation . This session will […]
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Dairy Margin Protection Program Analysis
The USDA has a Dairy Margin Protection Program (MPP) website that provides updated information. This information includes historical data along with a monthly update on monthly margin (All-Milk Price less calculated feed costs). As expected, the margin for 2014 was substantially in excess of the highest margin ($8) that could be accessed by dairy producers. […]