Farm Industry Trends
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Another Reason to Use a LLC Versus a Partnership
I came across a recent court case regarding the non-discharge of farm debt for a husband and wife in a partnership. The husband had provided a “borrowing base certificate” to the lender showing the farm owned about 4,700 head of cattle when in reality the farm never had more than 1,000 cattle at any one […]
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Diary Producer Continues Expansion into China
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, there was an interview with Andrew Ferrier, the Chief Executive of Fonterra Co-Operative Group of New Zealand. This company is the third largest dairy exporter in the world with sales of about $13 billion, profits of $500 million and almost 16,000 employees. It is interesting that a small country like New […]
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Federal Reserve Reports Rapid Rise in Land Values and Farm Income!
The Federal Reserve of Kansas City on Tuesday reported that farm land values in their district had risen substantially from the previous year. The year-over-year rise for non-irrigated land were as follows: Kansas 19.5% Missouri 6.6% Nebraska 17.6% Oklahoma 5.0% The overall value for their district was a 14.8 percent rise for non-irrigated crop land and 12.9 […]
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$2 Cotton Can Lead to Bankrupt Farmers!
Now that cotton is rapidly approaching $2 a pound or corn is over $7 a bushel, many people feel that farmers now have it made and the good times will always be here. What I have seen in my career is that almost the exact opposite may happen. Many farmers (or other business people) get […]
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Are You Ready for the Super Bowl of Farming?
After watching the Super Bowl last night (and I must admit I was rooting for the Packers), I reflected on how our farmers may want to check their operations and management to see if they would be ready to play in the Super Bowl of Farming. As a manager of your farm operation are you: […]
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Time for a Fiscal Checkup!
One of the things that struck me about attending both the TEPAP and the Top Producer Conference is how many of our top farmers are still not taking advantage of all of the financial tools available to them. For example, I would estimate that probably upwards of 90% of all farmers are still using the […]
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Remember That Returns Revert Back to the Mean
The first presentation at the Top Producer seminar today was done by Sterling Liddel, a vice president of economics at Rabo AgriFinance. The slide that stood out to me the most was the long-term mean price for corn over the last 80 or so years. For about the 40 years before the Russia price shocks […]
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Tomorrow’s Top Producer
I am in Chicago this week attending both the Top Producer conference and yesterday I attended the Tomorrow’s Top Producer and also gave a brief talk on income tax changes for 2011. There appears to be about 100 of tomorrow’s best farmers attending the conference and at lunch time, my wife and I were talking […]
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Machine Sheds Qualify for Bonus Depreciation
We seem to be getting quite a few questions regarding what farm buildings qualify for the 100% bonus deprecation for 2011 (and the period after September 8, 2010). Our latest question is as follows: “Is there any bonus depreciation on machine sheds in the year 2011?” For any new farm building placed in service during […]
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TEPAP – Final Conclusions
I spent all of last week attending the TEPAP conference in Austin, Texas. This intensive 7 day conference is put on by Professor Danny Klinefelter of Texas A & M University. Each day’s session would normally have two different topics covered by some of the best presenters in the farm business. I would highly recommend […]