End of Year Reflections
The idea for this blog was a glimmer in my mind at the end of 2008. While surfing on the web, I found the Golden Practices web-site that listed different industry specific blogs. This spurred me to action and with their help, we had a fully up and running blog site in the first quarter of this year. Some of the experiences and reflections that I have for 2009 are:
- 1. Our readers are a very geographically diverse group. I expected to have most of my readers from the corn belt of the US, while this is true, we seem to have many readers from India, Australia, Canada, Europe and all over the globe. I assume most of them read English and I hope they have learned a lot about US farming.
2. Altough I am a CPA by trade, I grew up on a farm and farmers are business people first, and taxes and finance and accounting is just part of the equation. I have tried to balance my posts with operations, marketing, accounting, taxes and trends.
3. I believe that the mega trends are and will continue to support farming as a great business going forward. All of the world has to eat and this requires farm. Horse and carriage was replaced by cars which may be replaced by some other form of transportation a 100 years from now, but we will still be farming at that time. China and India other growing countries will demand better food with more protein as they mature. Our American farmers will be there to provide a lot of this food.
4. I have set an ambitious goal for myself to get some type of online “Farmers Tax Guide” up and running by the end of 2010. I have several parts of it done, but to be fully operational and run the way I want it to may require programming skills that I do not currently have. Also, with tax season for me rapidly approaching, not much will get done between now and April 15.
5. The best thing about this blog are the wonderful people that I have met or communicated with that are doing similar blogs. A couple that you should check out at “The Exuberant Accountant“, “The Roth & Company Tax Update Blog“, and “Legacy by Design“. You can not go wrong by checking these sites out.
6. I thought I would get more comments on the postings and for several months, I did not get any at all. Recently, I have started to get more comments and e-mails and I really appreciate the feedback.
7. I also enjoyed trying to work up “White Papers” or “Tax Bulletins” on subjects that my readers have questions on. I have already done several of these and I am planning on putting them in a little better format and posting them to the site early in 2010.
Last, but not least, we want to wish everybody a prosperous New Year in 2010 and we look forward to seeing what the year brings.
Paul Neiffer is a certified public accountant and business advisor specializing in income taxation, accounting services, and succession planning for farmers and agribusiness processors. Paul is a principal with CliftonLarsonAllen in Walla Walla, Washington, as well as a regular speaker at national conferences and contributor at agweb.com. Raised on a farm in central Washington, he has been immersed in the ag industry his entire life, including the last 30 years professionally. Paul and his wife purchase an 180 acre ranch in 2016 and enjoy keeping it full of animals.
Thanks Paul! I’m so glad you did find Golden Practices’ accounting blog list and that it inspired you. It was a pleasure working with you on your blog. And it’s been fantastic watching you take the blog to great success for your practice. I’m really proud for you for the recognition it’s brought (and bringing) you in the ag circle, but more importantly, the relationships. You know your stuff and it shows!