More in Issues

How will your kids judge you on your management of today’s once in a lifetime bonanza? Ag banker and strategist Michael Swanson, Wells Fargo senior agricultural economist, worries that farmers are buying land at any price, at a big cost to future generations. He poses the questions below to farmers, as the stewards of multi-generation businesses. “These questions are about preserving future options, after the good times have gone,” he says. “Just as previous generations shepherded your business, ask yourself some questions to temper today’s sizzling once-in-a-lifetime environment.”...More

It’s not often a five-page letter from a farmer crosses my desk, even though it is obviously a typewriter-written, mass-mailed letter addressed to “magazine officials.” It was a letter from Vernon Bowman, a 74-year-old farmer from Sandborn, Ind. He outlined his use of commodity soybeans purchased from a local elevator to use as inexpensive double-crop soybean seed, and the subsequent legal actions taken against him by Monsanto....More

The Risk Management Agency (RMA) "resets" various features of the crop insurance programs annually to reflect the market's estimate of the value of crops intended for production in the current year. Among the most important factors are projected prices, volatility factors and harvest prices. Projected prices directly determine the insurable value of production, and thus impact premiums as well. The volatility factor is a measure of the price risk the market associates with potential price changes in the production year, and thus directly impacts the calculated costs of insurance. Finally, the harvest price has the potential to increase the amount of insurance coverage in effect if prices increase between the end of the projected price discovery period and the harvest price determination period....More

Climate change doesn’t mean banana trees will replace corn stalks in the Midwest, but growing corn will likely become a greater challenge. And the Corn Belt will likely move northward....More

“Farms are just like any small business; they fail if not run properly,” says family farm manager Jacob Wagers, when discussing the need to take family farms to the next level. “So many fail when they make a generational change.”...More

A week of rain and unseasonable warmth in January replenished the ground with enough water to eliminate dry conditions across Indiana except for the far northern part of the state. The report by the State Climate Office, based at Purdue University, is good news for crop farmers, who rely on rain and snow over the winter to "recharge" soils with water needed for spring plantings....More

The U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA) has announced that Chris Chinn (Missouri), Will Gilmer (Alabama), Katie Pratt (Illinois) and Bo Stone (North Carolina) have been selected as the winners of its Faces of Farming & Ranching program, a nationwide search launched in summer 2012 to help put real faces on the American agriculture industry. More than 100 applications were submitted from passionate, dedicated farmers and ranchers across the country....More

“How many times do I have to tell them?” “I told them about the change, so why didn’t they listen?” “Do I have to be everywhere?” The list of the things that can frustrate the farm leader is a long one. As the farm grows, think of ways to replicate our thinking in others to make sure the right things get done the right way....More