News

K-State extension assistant in agricultural economist Rich Llewelyn passes along the details on K-State's 2017 Risk and Profit Conference coming up in mid-August, which will focus in part on agricultural policy issues in advance of the forthcoming congressional work on the 2018 Farm Bill. 

K-State agricultural economist Vincent Amanor-Boadu offers his latest observations on U.S. trade policy, with the renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement set to begin next month. He says he still has concerns about trade issues over non-agricultural goods, and that agricultural trade could end up being harmed in the process. 

The executive director of the Kansas Farm Management Association at K-State, Kevin Herbel, breaks down the crop and livestock enterprise numbers from the recently-released Kansas net farm income report for 2016. He talks about the profitability of each of the major crops last year, as well as the returns to cow-calf and backgrounder cattle production, and things that made the difference between high-profit and low-profit operations within a given enterprise.

Brian Briggeman and Kansas Cooperative Council president Leslie Kaufman preview the 2017 K-State Symposium on Cooperative Issues and the KCC Leadership Roundtable, which will take place concurrently at K-State in August to address current financial challenges facing local agricultural cooperatives and their members.

Art Barnaby discusses recent changes in the hard winter wheat futures contract made by the CME intended to bring back convergence in cash and futures wheat prices. He focuses on the variable storage rate which has been adopted with the intent of prompting that price convergence.

K-State agricultural economist Ted Schroeder discusses the findings of a brand-new survey he's been involved with, which polled farmers in Kansas and eight other states about their grain marketing practices. The results shed light on how producers use the wide variety of marketing tools to generate maximum income and manage market risk.

A discussion by KFMA executive director Kevin Herbel and economists Craig Althauser, Sandy Myers, Mark Wood, Bryan Manny, Will Feldkamp and Jim Huschka, of 2016 Kansas net farm income, from the Kansas Farm Management Association showing improvement in overall farm income from the previous year, but with some notable exceptions. 

Monte Vandeveer discusses crop insurance options for wheat growers in western Kansas whose stands were adversely affected by the freezing temperatures and/or snowstorm that struck the High Plains in late April. He says that producers who incurred crop losses have some flexibility in how they claim the indemnity on that wheat, as well as how they insure any second crop they would plant on that acreage.