Farm Leadership
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Split ARC and PLC to Maximize Payments
Under the 2014 Farm Bill, a farm will need to decide between ARC and PLC on a covered crop-by-crop basis. However, many farmers have multiple farms registered with the FSA office(s). These farms may be composed of operations in multiple counties or states; multiple entity ownership; or for a number of other reasons. Since the election is by […]
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Another Conservation Easement Tax Court Case – Mostly in Taxpayer’s Favor
There are multiple Tax Court rulings on conservation easements each year. In the Schmidt v. Commissioner case issued today, the Tax Court ruled mostly in favor of the taxpayer, but not totally. The Schmidt’s lived in Colorado for many years and purchased about 40 acres of land in northern El Paso County. They attempted to […]
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How to Handle Gift of Grain
We got this question from one of our readers: “My grandfather gave me a generous gift of soybeans for my college fund. Since he gave me the actual crop, he paid no taxes on it. When I sold it I received a check of around $8,000. I will have file a tax return for the […]
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Farm Financial Standards Council Annual Meeting
I will be attending the annual meeting for the Farm Financial Standards Council in Billings, Montana beginning tomorrow and continuing through Thursday. I have posted about the council several times before, but if you are interested in updating your financial records to the accrual method of accounting, I would highly recommend downloading the standards from […]
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Base Acre Reallocation Options Under the 2014 Farm Bill
FarmdocDaily just released today an analysis of the base acre reallocation options under the new farm bill. The report gives a very good analysis of the base acres by the various major crops and the variances between base acres and planted acres for 2012. Here are charts of the major crops by base acres and […]
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The Effect of Premium Subsidies on Crop Insurance Demand
The Economic Research Service of the USDA periodically releases reports on various items related to agriculture. This month, they released a report on the “The Effects of Premium Subsidies on Demand for Crop Insurance“. The actual report is about 30 pages long and has a very detailed regression analysis for about 10 pages of the […]
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USDA Offers Assistance to Farmers and Ranchers Affected by Fires
Just north of where I live is burning a very large forest and range fire. The latest numbers I saw showed close to 300,000 acres or about 400 square miles have been burnt and only about 20% of the fire is contained. The local USDA FSA office for Okanogan/Ferry Counties (which are two of the […]
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ACA Subsidies: One Court Strikes Down, Another Upholds
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Tuesday morning that the insurance subsidies granted through the federally run health exchange, which covered 36 states for the first open enrollment period, are not allowed by the law. Subsidies provided by state ran exchanges would still be allowed. The highly anticipated opinion in the […]
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Top 100 Ag Banks
The American Bankers Association (ABA) posts a quarterly report of the 100 largest Ag Banks (Non-Farm Credit). In the first quarter report for this year, the #1 bank for Ag loans was Wells Fargo with $7.229 billion of farmland ($2.231 billion and $4.998 billion of other ag loans). #2 was Rabobank with $3.957 billion followed […]
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Rural Mainstreet Index Continues to Weaken
Creighton University prepares a Rural Mainstreet Index that measures the economic outlook for the agricultural/rural sector of the economy. An index reading of 50 indicates growth neutral. The index for June 2013 was at 60.5 and for June of this year, it has dropped to 53.6, almost growth neutral. The index is composed of a […]