Farm Leadership
-
Dairy Margin Management Options
The new farm bill brought in an additional dairy margin management program that will be effective September 1, 2014 (perhaps later if FSA is not ready). Dairy farmers currently have Livestock Gross Margin (LGM) Insurance under the crop insurance program. It would be nice if dairy farmers could take advantage of both programs, however, the […]
-
PLC/ARC Updates
One of the questions we are getting is “When would individual ARC make more sense than county ARC?”. As most of our readers know, ARC and PLC makes payments based upon base acres. In the case of county ARC, the payment is based upon 85% of base acres. In the case of individual farm ARC, […]
-
Know Your Deferred Tax Liability!
Over the last couple of months I have seen some farm operations that based upon the fair market value financial statements provided appear to have net worth, however, when you factor in the amount of deferred taxes that would be owed if all of the inventories, equipment and receivables were liquidated, the farming operation would […]
-
Corn Belt and Cash Rents Cropland Values Level Off
The Chicago Federal Reserve releases a quarterly update on cropland values and cash rents for their district which comprises the three main “I” states in the corn belt (Iowa, Illinois and Indiana) and although good Iowa farm land was up 1% for the quarter, good farmland in Illinois and Indiana dropped 4% in the latest […]
-
Portability Revisited
With the “permanent” changes in the estate tax laws from about 2 years ago, we now have a permanent provision called portability. This allows for the unused portion of someone’s estate to be “ported” over to the surviving spouse to be used on their final estate tax return. Example: John Bean passes away worth $1 […]
-
Kansas Land Values-Analysis of Four Year Trends
Kansas State University has a great resource for farmers and others interested in farming, not just in that state. On Friday, Dr. Mykel Taylor presented a webinar on the trends in Kansas Farm Values over the last four years. The Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service (KAS) reports annual farmland prices, but only on a statewide basis. As most […]
-
USDA to Award $6 Million for Farm Bill Help
The USDA announced yesterday that they will be awarding $ 6 million to help farmers analyze their farm bill options primarily related to ARC and PLC. There will also be tools to analyze the options for dairy producers under the new Dairy Margin Protection Program that should start September of this year and the Noninsured Crop Disaster […]
-
Where are all the Chickens?
Following up on a few of our previous posts on cattle and hog numbers from the 2012 AG census, we now will review chickens. As you might guess, we count cattle and hogs in the millions, but we count chickens in the billions. As of 2012, there were about 8.5 billion chickens marketed for the […]
-
Does Warren Buffett Practice What He Preaches?
President Obama sometimes refers to the Buffett Surtax when promoting a new budget or tax law changes. This surtax refers to the famous Omaha investor (Warren Buffet) who talks about volunteering his willingness to pay a higher income tax rate than the current law provides for. However, much of Warren’s wealth is not current income […]
-
Farm Income and Land Values Continue to “Soften”
We periodically recap some of the surveys done by the Kansas City Federal Reserve. Their region comprises one of the major corn belt states (Nebraska) along with Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and the Mountain States. The survey released on May 15 recapped the responses of Ag bankers in the district. These bankers reported lower farm income […]