Farm Trends
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Minimize Your Fixed Cost Amortization to Maximize Your Profits
To maximize your profit for your farm, it is very important to determine what your annual fixed costs are and determine if you are maximizing your amortization of these costs on your farm. Fixed costs are those costs that do not materially change with production increases and decreases. Some examples of fixed costs are: […]
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Lack of Data Dooms GRIP & GRP in 1000+ Counties
Marcia Taylor with DTN/The Progressive Farmer had a great post recently on the elimination of crop insurance under the Group Risk Income Protection (GRIP) and Group Risk Program (GRP) in over 1,000 counties across the US. The primary reason for eliminating these counties were due to not reporting at least 30 yield reports or 25% […]
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Strong Farmland Auction Prices Continue
Mike Walsten from the “Your Precious Land” has posted recently that farmland sold at auctions are still enjoying high prices. Mike also was interviewed on Ag Day last week and one of his interesting comments related to the trend of farmers in the metro Chicago area. When pricing for development land was very high during the mid […]
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Farm Debt Levels Are Increasing
All in all, farm debt levels have increased, however, farmers have done a very good job of not letting these levels get out of control. The United States Department of Agriculture has a very good print and online magazine called Amber Waves. Each issue generally has several good articles related to farming and I would […]
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Top-Third vs. Bottom-Third
The Kansas State University Department of Agricultural Economics periodically produces a recap of the high 1/3, mid 1/3 and low 1/3 of various farms in their state. They just released the latest analysis for corn, sorghum, wheat, soybeans and alfalfa for the three years 2006-2008. The total number of crop farms reporting for all three […]
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Milk @ $15 – Are You Taking Advantage of it!
Chuck Schwartau of the University of Minnesota Extension Service has a great post of how the trend in milk prices has changed over the last several months. It is no secret that dairy farmers having been hurting for close to a year now and a common statement was “If milk was at $15,00 per […]
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Stable Land Prices – Maybe, but How Long
The University of Illinois had a recent October article on how land prices for Illinois had held steady from January 1, 2008 to January 1, 2009. Prices for both years were slightly more than $4,500 per acre. This contrasts with prior year increases. Between 2003 and 2008, the average price per acre grew by $2,120 or […]
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Will the Dairy Price Incease Save the Farmers in Time
The National Agricultural Bankers Conference is meeting in San Antonio, Texas this week. Marcia Zarley from DTN/The Progressive Farmer has a good overview of what the bankers are talking about. Farmers who are in the dairy and pork industry are really feeling the pinch of low milk and pork prices right now. Many of the […]
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Trip to Kansas City
I just got back from spending about three days in Kansas City. During my time there, I was able to get in about 6 hours of driving a John Deere 9660 combine. It took until about noon for the soybeans to dry up enough to be able to harvest them. I know when I was […]
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Four Key Steps to Expand Your Operation
Top Producer Magazine / Website is a great resource for farmers that are trying to be the “Top Producer”. I recently came across a short article from their editor, Greg Vincent, about expanding a farm. He interviewed former Farm Credit Services of America (FCSA) financial officer turned financial consultant, Roger Schlitter. I thought it had […]