News

K-State grain market economist Dan O'Brien talks about long-range grain marketing opportunities showing up in the current futures market "carry", and he remarks on the impact of computerization on the markets' response to fundamental signals, during his weekly segment on the grain market trends.

K-State livestock economist Glynn Tonsor is featured in this week's cattle market segment:  he talks about the increasing significance of the African swine fever outbreak in China for the entire U.S. meat complex, including beef...and he passes along his latest Kansas feedlot profitability forecast for the balance of 2019.

K-State agricultural economists Terry Griffin and Gregg Ibendhal continue their series on the factors that lead to top-performing farms economically in Kansas, based on Kansas Farm Management Association data:  they've recently analyzed the influence of farm size and debt management on farm profitability, and talk about what they've discovered.

The director of the Arthur Capper Cooperative Center at K-State, Brian Briggeman, talks about the contribution of farmer cooperatives to the Kansas economy...that's the subject a new study conducted by the center which illustrates the economic importance of cooperatives to local and regional economies in the state.

K-State agricultural economists Terry Griffin and Gregg Ibendahl talk about their economic analysis which is identifying the most profitable farms in Kansas and the reasons why they excel financially. They are using Kansas Farm Management Association data for this and will be posting a series of weekly reports on their findings this spring.

K-State agricultural economist Mykel Taylor talks about what farmers can do to maintain a mutually-beneficial working relationship with landlords:  she urges producers to treat their landlords as partners in their operations, and to fully inform them of what's being done on their land.

The executive director of the Kansas Farm Management Association, K-State's Kevin Herbel, offers his assessment of the economic state of production agriculture in Kansas currently, and offers a checklist of what producers can do to improve their financial management in 2019:  setting achievable goals; keeping an organized set of financial records; and managing debt structure. He also details the benefits of conducting an enterprise analysis and projecting the financial returns to each enterprise; using economic benchmarks for a comparative analysis of an operation; and preparing a cash flow for the farm or ranch, as well as looks at the family expenses on a farm, including health care and insurance. 

K-State agricultural economist Mykel Taylor announces that the new 2019 Kansas County-Level Cash Rents for Non-Irrigated Cropland report has just been released by K-State...it identifies the average cash lease rate for dryland crop ground county-by-county, as a baseline from which farmers and their landlords can negotiate leasing arrangements for this next cropping season.