Ag Policy
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WA State Piece Rate Workers Must Be Compensated for Breaks
The WA Supreme Court decided on July 16, 2015 in Demetrio v. Sakuma Bros. Farms, Inc. that employers must pay piece rate workers for rest periods “separate and apart from the piece rate.” Farm workers paid by the task are entitled to rest-break pay above the negotiated piece rate. This ruling is the result of a […]
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Updated PLC Yields Much Higher Than Old Yields
One of the options available to landowners under the 2014 Farm Bill was to update their yield to 90% of the average yield from 2008 to 2012. A producer could retain the old CCP yield which in many cases had not been updated since the 1980s or update to the new yield. Producers who elected […]
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Senate Finance Committee Releases Tax Reform Reports
The Senate Finance Committee just released four reports on possible tax reforms yesterday. The reports were on the following aspects of tax reform: The Business Income Report The Community Development and Infrastructure Report The Individual Tax Report The Savings and Investment Report In today’s post, I will recap some of my findings from the first […]
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It’s Official – No PLC Payments for Wheat, Barley and Oats!
Wheat, Barley and Oats have a marketing year that ends May 31. The USDA released the final 2014/15 MYA prices for each crop as follows: Wheat – $5.99 Barley – $5.30 Oats – $3.20 In all cases, the MYA price for each crop exceeded the reference price called for in the 2014 Farm Bill. These references […]
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Largest Decrease in Cash Rents Since 1987
I was reading the latest Ag Letter from the Chicago Federal Reserve and noticed an interesting tidbit on cash rents. The first part of the letter addressed farmland values being relatively flat to slightly negative for the first quarter of 2015. A chart on page 2 showed the annual percentage change in cash rents for […]
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Extreme Drought Hits Washington State – USDA Provides Some Relief
Ranchers in Eastern Washington may be eligible for financial drought relief from USDA after the US Drought Monitor reached D2, or extreme drought, for eight consecutive weeks. I know that this weekend is supposed to hit 111 or higher on both Saturday and Sunday and almost all of next week is expected around 105 or […]
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Is it a Bubble or Not?!
Marketwatch.com is published by the Wall Street Journal and last week they had an article on “Spiking farmland prices offer a lesson on market bubbles“. From the title, you would naturally assume that they believe farmland prices were at the bubble stage and headed for a large fall. However, in reading the article, it appears […]
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Did High-Yield States Elect More PLC
The FSA released information on Monday that showed the amount of farms and acres electing ARC and PLC on both a national and state basis for each covered crop. I was curious if those states with very high yields (such as Missouri and Illinois) in 2014 would elect more PLC than other states since they […]
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Who Was Closer – CBO or Paul?
The USDA yesterday released data on the sign up for ARC and PLC by all of the covered crops. As expected from our posts before on the subject, most of the corn and soybean acres signed up for ARC-CO versus PLC. Summarizing some of the major crops as follows: Of the crops on the table, […]
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Verify AGI Now
Producers who will receive some type of program payment for the 2014 crop year (ARC or PLC) will need to verify their Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) with FSA before they will be eligible for a payment. Even though the payment will not be received until after October 1, 2015, the verification of income is based […]