Demographics
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Day 1 of the NW Co-op Council Meeting
The following post was written by David Enquist from our Moses Lake, Washington office. The original plan was for me to be in Portland yesterday with him, but I ended up in Michigan and then to top it off, the plane out of Detroit was a late plus a strong head-wind meant I missed the flight […]
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Social Security Announces 1.5% Increase in Benefits
On Wednesday, October 30, 2013, the Social Security Administration announced that benefits will rise by 1.5% beginning with January payment. This represents a $22.50 monthly increase for a recipient receiving $1,500 per month. This increase will apply to about 63 million Americans receiving benefits. The SSA also announced that the wage base will increase from $113,700 […]
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Should You Delay Purchasing Fertlizer for Next Spring?!
Based upon some recent AgWeb articles, it may be a good idea to wait about four to six weeks before making any serious fertilizer decisions for any 2014 spring needs. Although fertilizer prices have been dropping, Russia’s OAO Urakali (URKA), the world’s largest potash producer recently announced they will be increasing output next year by 24%, which […]
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Farm Income 4th On List of Reasons to Purchase Farmland
The Kansas City Federal Reserve puts out a quarterly survey on credit conditions in their region and the latest survey for the second quarter had some interesting trends. Due to lower wheat prices and the continuing high feed costs, their farmers actually had lower-income for the quarter. However, farmland prices continued their upward trend, up […]
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Are Land Value Increases Flattening Out?
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago produces a quarterly newsletter on farmland values for their district which comprises, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. Their latest report seems to indicate a flattening of the rapid farmland price increases we have seen over the last few years. although prices were up 17% on an annual basis, […]
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Midwest Crop Tour – Last Day
On Thursday, we finished up the samples for the Midwest crop tour. The Eastern leg took samples primarily in Eastern Iowa, while the Western Leg took samples in Southern Minnesota. For all of the data collected on the tour, you can go to www.agweb.com and check out the results. The biggest observation for today is […]
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Day Two of Midwest Crop Tour
Today, we left Fishers, Indiana and headed due west and then north towards Kokomo. Most of the corn samples we took between Tipton (where we started our sampling) were very good. Most of the yields were in the 185 to 220 range. Soybean counts were above the three-year average. Our highest corn count in Indiana was […]
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First Day of the Midwest Crop Tour
We left Columbus, Ohio this morning at 7 am and headed west. It was tough going the first couple of hours with the suburbs and humidity cloud to get any samples in, but we finally got some samples. Our lowest of the day was 53 bushels in Drake County but as usual on the crop […]
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Start of the Midwest Crop Tour
We are at Columbus, Ohio for the start of the Midwest Crop Tour. Tonight, all of the scouts have a meeting to go over the ground rules for the tour. On the Eastern Leg will be 11 routes that cover the area from Columbus to Southern Minnesota. The Western Leg will cover Eastern South Dakota […]
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The Perils of Benchmarking
The next two sessions at FFSC dealt with the perils of benchmarking. As farmers try to benchmark themselves against other comparable farm operations, it becomes readily apparent that many perils or issues can arise. In many cases farmers (since they are human) really like using benchmarking when they are above average. In they are below […]