Demographics
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Tidbits From the Kansas City Fed – Part 1
As many of our readers know, we tend to quote the Kansas City Federal Reserve from time to time. They have a very good website with several quarterly reviews of the ag economy and farm land prices. They recently put out a report titled “Outlook for the Rural Economy” that has several interesting tidbits that […]
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Retail Coffee Prices Up 38% in One Year
This week, Smuckers, the makers of Folgers and Dunkin Donuts retail coffee announced an 11% increase in the cost of their coffee. This comes on top of a 10% increase in February, a 9% increase in August of last year and a 4% increase in May of last year. If you apply all of the increases […]
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Don’t Be A Hobby Farm
Many of our readers will ask us questions about starting a farm, however, when discussing it with them, many of them are talking about a hobby farm and not a real farm. For tax purposes, a hobby farm has some very unfavorable consequences to the farmer. Net income is always reported, however, a net loss […]
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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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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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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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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 […]
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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 […]