News

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.

Agricultural law professor Roger McEowen of the Washburn University School of Law takes up a variety of new court rulings of relevance to agricultural producers, including a decision on another case involving dicamba herbicide drift, and one on whether a nearby state followed the proper procedure in issuing a confined animal feeding operation permit to a producer.

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.

From the Department of Agricultural Economics at K-State, Robin Reid and LaVell Windsor talk about a new series of K-State financial workshops for women in agriculture that will be taking place at 31 sites around the state in early 2020...they'll go over what this first-of-its-kind series will cover, encouraging potential participants to register for the session closest to them as soon as possible.

The director of the Arthur Capper Cooperative Center at K-State, Brian Briggeman, talks about the financial state of agricultural cooperatives in Kansas as another crop production season winds down. He says that co-ops are facing their own economic obstacles, much as producers are.

K-State agricultural economists Kevin Herbel and Hannah Shear share highlights from their new study of the returns to cow-calf production in Kansas, based on Kansas Farm Management Association data complemented by a new survey of cow-calf producers on their management practices...they linked those practices to cow-calf economic performance and discovered several interesting trends.

K-State livestock economist Glynn Tonsor returns to comment on the cattle and beef market behavior immediately following the Tyson beef plant fire in August. He has reviewed all the market-driving factors involved in the immediate drop in fed cattle prices, while at the same time, boxed beef prices rose significantly, saying that those shouldn't be ignored as that situation is further investigated.