Farm Trends
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Farm Exports May Hit Record for 2010/11
I just read an article in the most recent issue of BloombergBusinessWeek magazine that had some interesting facts and comments. First, for the first 8 months of 2010, farm exports are up by 14% to about $ 70 billion and this is before the recent increase in prices. Second, it is estimated that China will […]
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When is a Deposit Income – Part 2
In response to our post on when is a deposit income, we had a reader write in the following: “In regard to today’s blog: I have a tenant who , over the years, mails his rent that is due Jan 1 in the previous Dec. Obviously he is deducting the rent as a “prepay”. I […]
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Floods Destroy Over $3 Billion in Pakistani Crops
The recent deadly floods in Pakistanhave destroy $3.27 billion of rice, cotton and sugar production according to is Farm Minster Naza Muhammad Gondal. The country lost about 2.4 million metric tons of rice (about 80 million bushels) and 10.4 million metric tons of sugar can. The country may also need to import almost 3 million […]
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Wall Street is Following Ag
When farm commodity prices are increasing, the coverage of Ag tends increase by the Wall Street press. In today’s Wall Street Journal, there were two articles related to Ag commodities. In the Ahead of the Tape article, there was a discussion on how the price of cotton going over $1 per pound for only the […]
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Begin to Lock in 2011 and 2012 profits?
As corn starts to exceed $5 in price and pricing can be locked in 2011 or even 2012 crops, have you checked your budgets for those years. If you have and are able to lock in your major input prices such as fertilizer and diesel, you should be looking at making $250 per acre or […]
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Verasun Bankruptcy – Check Your Preference Payments
Whenever a farmer sells a crop to a purchaser of their product, they always need to be aware of what happens if that purchaser goes bankrupt. Any payments that the farmer receives within 90 days of bankruptcy can be considered preference payments and the farmer may have to pay some or all of these payments […]
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Russia Extends Its Wheat-Export Ban
The Wall Street Journal had a fairly extensive article in today’s paper on the extension of the ban of wheat exports by Russia from December of this year until after next year’s crop. However, as most traders and farmers know, you will believe what Russia says at your own risk. What we do know from […]
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What will Yields Look Like in 50 Years
I have read several articles recently regarding the trend in yields for corn and beans over the last 20-30 years. During the 1980’s and early 1990’s, the average increase in corn yields was about 1.5%. During the last 15 years or so, the yield increase has been closer to 2%. How will corn yields look […]
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The Crop Tour – Day 4
Today, we have a very long drive ahead of us as we traveled from Spenser, Iowa, headed north into Minnesota. We then headed west almost to the South Dakota border. We then turned north and started to do our counts in those four counties along the border. At Canby, we then turned south and east […]
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The Crop Tour – Day 3
Today was a free form day for us. We had Brian from Pro Farmer with us and he was doing multiple radio interviews through out the day so we had to stop at various times and let him make his calls in the best cell phone area that we could find. I have A T […]