Farm Industry Trends
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Is There An Error in the Dairy Margin Protection Program
The new farm bill provides dairy farmers with a margin protection program that will pay them if the average milk price for a two month period does not exceed the average feed price. The average feed price is comprised of corn, soybean meal and alfalfa. Dairy farmers who enrolled in the program do not have […]
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Make Sure to Review Your Base Acres
One of the original proposals in the farm bill discussion was to make payments based on actual production, not base acres. Well, this did not happen, so for 2014-2018 crop years, your actual ARC or PLC payments will be made based upon your base acres. For county elected ARC or PLC provisions, this payment will […]
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Accounting Boot Camp
After being postponed for over a month due to the January Polar Vortex, we finally had the accounting boot camp today in St Louis. About 65 had signed up, but almost 90 people showed up for the boot camp. I gave a talk on why accrual financial statements for farmers are important and the three […]
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ARC & PLC Are Not Crop Insurance
We had a reader ask the following question: “Paul, I have been reading your blogs about federal crop ins. Is PLC and ARC the whole program or do we still have the traditional options that we have had the last few years? If the traditional plan is still in place will we have to pick […]
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ARC Could Lock in More Revenue Than Crop Insurance
We have written several posts on Agricultural Risk Coverage over the last couple of weeks, however, the Olympic average calculations called for in ARC may yield higher income levels than crop insurance for the 2014 and 2015 crop years. ARC is calculated by taking the average revenue for either county or individual coverage. This Olympic […]
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John Deere Expects Increase (Hopes For) in Section 179 and Bonus Depreciation
John Deere released their first quarter fiscal 2014 years yesterday and profits were up slightly from the year before. As part of the conference call, they highlighted that US farm receipts are expected to remain high, however, based on their graph in slide # 6, they do show US farm receipts over $400 billion in […]
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IRS Data by Zip Code and County
The IRS just released certain summarized income and expense information based upon taxpayers in a county or zip code for tax year 2011. This information includes the number of returns with AGI between certain dollar amounts such as 0-$25,000, over $200,000, etc. It also provides information on the components of income such as wages, interest, dividends. […]
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When Farmers Barter
We had a reader ask the following question: “If you barter a vehicle for grain do you just put that grain with your other grain sales as there was no 1099 b form?” Many farmers barter goods and services during the year and in many cases, the barter transaction is not reflected accurately on the […]
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Some ACA Relief for Employers with 50 to 99 Employees
The Department of Treasury issued Regulations today (Monday, February 10) announcing that employers with more than 50 employees but less than 100 would not have to offer health insurance or pay a “responsibility” penalty until 2016 (one year later than the postponed 2015 requirement). Additionally, it appears that seasonal employees that are not expected to […]
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Margin Protection for Dairy Producers
Dairy farmers are now starting to enjoy healthy margins after several years of either breakeven or loss margins. The new farm bill provides margin protection for dairy farmers. This margin protection is calculated based on the difference between the “all-milk price” and average feed cost. Average feed cost is calculated as the sum of the price for: […]