Farm Leadership
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Crop and Livestock Producers are Opposites
The Kansas City Fed just released their latest Ag Credit Survey and it certainly highlights the contrast between financial conditions for crop and livestock producers. In their second chart of the report, it recapped the percentage of producers who indicate a significant improvement, modest improvement, no change, modest deterioration or significant detonation in conditions from […]
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Where’s Waldo (Paul)?
My children used to like to take a look at the books featuring “Where’s Waldo?”. My four boys would race to see who could find him first (they usually beat mom and dad to it too). Once I started doing more traveling, many of my staff will now ask “Where’s Waldo/Paul?”. So this post will […]
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“Cost don’t Matter, Except When it Does”
I seem to get an email on at least a monthly basis asking what “my cost basis is” when the person inherits property, usually farm land. The email usually goes into great detail about the cost basis of the property when it was originally acquired by their parents or grandparents and usually has very little […]
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Another Personal Invitation
The Farm Financial Standards Council was formed several years ago to help the farming industry adopt accounting standards for farmers, ranchers, bankers, accountants and others to better present and use financial accounting records in their operations. It is a purely a non-profit organization composed of unpaid volunteers and they provide a very valuable service to […]
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NSAC Cyber Security Webcast
As a quick follow up to a recent post ( Think You Are Too Small to Be a Target of Cyber Crime? Think Again.), on June 2nd Mark Eich from CliftonLarsonAllen will be presenting a Cyber Security webcast for the National Society of Accountant’s for Cooperatives (NSAC). While this group is geared towards Cooperatives, the […]
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Don’t Get Too Greedy!
The US Tax Court released the Costello case yesterday and it is a great example of how much tax you may have to pay when you either get “too greedy” or don’t follow the tax rules or both. David and Barbara Costello purchased a large farm (according to the Tax Court 73.6 acres is a […]
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Think You Are Too Small to Be a Target of Cyber Crime? Think Again.
Cybercrime has been a hot topic in the news lately, and for good reason with organizations such as Target, Sony, Blue Cross, etc. falling victims. However, it is very common when we talk with smaller organizations that they don’t feel it is a threat from them because their businesses are small businesses. I recently came […]
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Ethanol is XX% of Corn Production
I always find it curious that ethanol use is quoted as being about 35% of corn production (about 5 billion bushels divided by 14 billion bushels plus or minus). What always seems to be missed in the equation is the amount of dried distillers grain (DDG) that is produced as part of the ethanol process. […]
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Senator Wyden Indicates Tax Reform Must Include Flow Through Entities
Senator Ron Wyden of the Senate Finance Committee indicated on Friday at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor that any comprehensive tax reform must include flow-through entities. As we have discussed in posts before, tax reform is primarily based on getting the top corporate tax rate down closer to 25% to be competitive with other […]
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Another Bites The Dust
I got married back in 1982 and my wife and I had discussions about playing the song “Another Bites the Dust” by Queen as we were walking down the aisle but saner heads prevailed and we kept it more traditional. Plus, we thought about everyone over age 30 in the audience would not know the […]