Farm Leadership
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Pay Your Kids – It Pays at Tax Time
I remember working on our wheat and pea farm for my parents when I was in high school. During spring, I would help plant the peas. During harvest, I drove the combine for about 3 to 4 weeks depending on the yields, weather and how much custom cutting we did. In the fall, I would […]
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Say “Thank You” and “I’m Sorry”
I was reading a good book by Mark Reiter called “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” . Mark is a consultant to many Fortune 500 companies on how to get their key employees to overcome thier worst personailty traits. In the book, Mark pinpoints 20 traits that almost all people in business and in life […]
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Twelve Steps to Avoid Being a Marketing Lemming
I came across a good marketing company be watching Agday the other day. Alan Brugler was discussing the corn and bean market and I decided to go check out his web site. He is located in Omaha, Nebraska and has a very good short guide on how not to be a marketing lemming. I will […]
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My Last ACRE Post for the Year (I Promise!)
With less than two weeks to sign up for the ACRE program (the date is August 14, which is a Friday) and with most ag offices being understaffed, if you need to sign up for ACRE, I would suggest doing it now. I have read about several meetings where there might be a crowd of […]
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One More ACRE Posting
I know my readers are probably getting tired of me writing about the ACRE program, however, I think it is very important for you to review how it affects your farm operation and your landlords. Marcia Zarley Taylor at DTN has several good postings on how the ACRE program works and how to communicate it to […]
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Corn Coming out of our “Ears”
Many are calling the USDA Planted Acreage Report that came out this week “Bloody Tuesday” since the amount of corn acreage planted this year was much higher than what the trade was expecting. Even though there was a large amount of rain early in the Eastern Corn Belt, three of the Western Corn Belt states, […]
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The Road From Good To Great
As a CPA, I review a lot of financial statements. As part of this review, I try to determine the ratios that separate the business from other businesses in the same industry. Sometimes these ratios are positive and sometimes they are negative. For comparing ratios for farmers, a great site is the Farm […]
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For New Farmers (or Old Ones)
The people behind Successful Farming have developed a network for new farmers called Farmers for the Future. They have had at least one conference and Loren Kruse, Editor-in-Chief of Successful Farming recapped the key ideas from the last conference. This recap had many good ideas for new farmers, but I think almost all of the […]
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Credit Squeeze is Hitting Farmers Now
It seemed for several months that the credit squeeze was passing farmers by. However, lately I have ready several acticles about the credit squeeze hitting farms and farmers now. Frontier Bank in Colorado specialized in loaning to farmers and it went under a couple of months back. Most of these farmers using the bank were […]
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Why Strategic Plan Succeed
In my previous post, I listed six reasons why strategic plans fail. Strategic plans will succeed if they incorporate three main phases: The first phase is “intuitive thinking ” and it has more of an emotional attachment to it. This first phase answers the bigger questions such as, “Why are we in business? Who are our […]