Farm Industry Trends
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TEPAP – Final Day
After six great days of presentation, we have finally come to the last day of the TEPAP conference. This is only a morning session and our presentation on public relations plans was giving by Moe Russell of the Russell Consulting Group. Moe shared that we had 3 sets of good time in the last 100 […]
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TEPAP – Day 6 Afternoon Session
Michael Mazzocco, Director at Verdant AgriBusiness Consultants, presented the afternoon session of day 6 of the TEPAP conference. This session was on Market Growth Strategies for farmers. To grow your farm revenues, you have seven degrees of freedom: Increase sales – same customers; same product mix Existing products; new customers New products – same or […]
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TEPAP – Day 6 Morning Session
The morning session of Day 6 of the TEPAP conference was presented by Allan Gray, professor at Purdue University. This session focused on strategic management for farmers.Strategic management for farmers usually requires us to wear both hats – The General Hat (the leader) and The Troop Hat (getting the work done). We seem to spend […]
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TEPAP – Afternoon Session of Day 5
The afternoon session of day 5 of the TEPAP conference was presented by Brent Gloy of Purdue University on improving profitability through process improvement. On process improvement, it is important to understand that it is difficult to manage output, whereas is very possible to manage inputs. Farmers need to determine and manage the factors that […]
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TEPAP – Day 5 Morning Session
The morning session of day 5 of the TEPAP conference was performed by Bernie Erven, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at Ohio State University (of THE Ohio State University as one farmer told me this week). His discussion was on Human Resources Management dealing with: Be a Better Boss Organizational Structure Dealing with Problem Employees […]
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100% Bonus Depreciation – No Income Limitation!
We had a reader send in the following question: “I read a post from you a week ago or so about 100% bonus depreciation on farm buildings. Looking at putting up a machinery shop will I be able to deduct all of the cost my 2011 taxes if I put the building up this year […]
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TEPAP – Day 4 Afternoon Session
The afternoon session of day 4 of the TEPAP convention was presented by Gary Maas on dealing with all of the different personality types associated with a farm operation (or in life). The interesting part of the presentation is how your personality based upon your natural style may be completely different from the style you […]
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TEPAP – Day 4 Morning Session
David Kohl, noted speaker and professor from Virginia Tech University provided a morning session on Mega Trends for agriculture. Highlights are as follows: 70% of North American farms will change hands by 2025. This is not just ownership, but who farms the land. This provides plenty of opportunities for American farmers. Volatility will require an […]
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TEPAP – Day 3 morning session
For the Tuesday morning session of the TEPAP conference, we had Dr. Ed Siefried, a noted economist to explain how the macro economic trends will affect farming in 2011. Highlights are as follows: 1. The economy in 2011 is expected to be recovering with growth possibly around 4% with low inflation. However, in all previous […]
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TEPAP – Day 2
Day two of the TEPAP conference was primarily focused on management accrual accounting for farmers. The presentation was done by Dick Wittman of Wittman Consulting. As a CPA, Dick was speaking to the choir (so to speak). Some of the ideas that resonated with me were: It is very important to implement full accrual accounting […]