News

Livestock economist Lee Schulz of Iowa State University is featured on this week's cattle market segment: he offers his latest thinking on what the just-signed trade deal with China means for U.S. beef exports to that country, and he previews both the USDA cattle-on-feed and cattle inventory reports which will come out within the next two weeks.

K-State agricultural economist Robin Reid and Rich Llewelyn advise crop producers to start finalizing their decisions on which USDA farm program option they'll enroll in for 2019 and 2020 production, choosing either the Agricultural Risk Coverage or the Price Loss Coverage option. They remind about the helpful information at K-State's agmanager.info web site that producers can benefit from as they decide.

Gregg Ibendahl talks about his new analysis of the farm debt situation, using Kansas Farm Management Association data to identify trends in the extent of debt incurred by farmers currently...the findings tell him that producers need to be evaluating their debt status very carefully right now.

Agricultural economist Robin Reid and farm analyst LaVell Winsor of K-State provide another reminder about the Farm Financial Skills for Women in Agriculture workshops coming up in January and February...a series of programs to be presented locally at 32 sites around the state, with the registration deadline coming up soon.

K-State agricultural economist Terry Griffin talks about a different kind of analysis he has just finished up:  he tallied articles from a highly-respected journal to identify trends in farm management research, which indicated to him where such research might best be directed going forward.

The executive director of the Kansas Farm Management Association at K-State, Kevin Herbel, discusses a number of end-of-year farm and ranch management topics: conducting a thorough evaluation of where the operation stands financially at year's end, and setting goals for 2020, ways of identifying the operation's financial position and creating a cash flow projection for the months ahead, and using financial benchmarking and other tools. He says that this should go beyond the normal end-of-year tax management.

K-State agricultural economist Mykel Taylor talks about the "flex lease" approach to renting crop ground, which is drawing more attention from producers...she explains how a flex lease works, saying that it offers an alternate way of distributing crop production risk between tenant and landlord.

Terry Griffin offers his take on what's up and coming in the field of precision farming technology, with autonomous and robotic field work systems leading the way. He also talks about the economics of investing in precision technology, and tells of several opportunities for producers to learn more about precision systems that would fit their operations, including the annual precision technology conference to be hosted by the Kansas Agricultural Research and Technology Association.