Two tools can soften that final crop year in a serious way. Most farmers haven’t heard of either, because they live mostly in the world of doctors, dentists, and small business owners. But they fit a retiring farm operation about as well as any tax planning idea out there. The first is a cash balance… Read more »

The Fork in the Road: 10 Practices that Separate Elite Ag Managers A recent webcast participant posed a common question from producers and lenders: What will be the biggest change in agriculture between 2026 and 2030? The expected response usually centers on technology such as AI applications, regenerative agriculture, or consumer, societal, and global trends that are… Read more »

If you farm through an LLC or an S corporation, the old rule that capped your whole operation at a single payment limit is gone. Starting with the 2026 program year, those entities get a payment limit for each owner who is actively engaged in the farm — the same treatment general partnerships have always… Read more »

For decades, the “base acre” has been the fundamental unit of the American farm safety net. It represents a farm’s historical production footprint, dictating how much support a producer receives when market prices drop or yields fail. However, for years, many farmers felt boxed in by outdated acreage records and payment caps that simply didn’t… Read more »

Financials That Work for You While on the speaking circuit this year, I overheard a conversation between two producers about their financial statements. One suggested that financials had to be organized and developed to please the banker. The other producer directed a question at him: Do you use the financials to manage your business? The… Read more »

Dr. Kohl’s Ag Planning Playbook The economic environment is chaotic, and volatility in extremes shows no signs of abating. Currently the agricultural economy has a split personality that causes human emotions to fluctuate wildly. The grain and row crop sectors are in an extended downturn, experiencing suppressed prices, inflated costs and stubbornly elevated interest rates.… Read more »

10 Practical Tips For Farm Transition Management Walk into almost any farm kitchen, sit in on a lender’s annual review, or attend a commodity meeting, and one topic is quietly looming in the background. That topic, estate and transition management, consistently ranks among the top three challenges facing the agriculture industry, both domestically and globally.… Read more »

For the American producer, the final harvest is often the most difficult to manage, not because of the weather, but because of the IRS. Upon retirement, a farmer faces a “Tax Cliff” where operational deductions (seed, fuel, fertilizer) cease, just as a lifetime of accumulated inventory and depreciated equipment is liquidated. Without a proactive strategy,… Read more »

The Ag Bridge: From Financial Aid to Self-Reliance There has been much discussion about the government checks to agriculture and possible future proposals for more funding. The first package was coined the “financial bridge program” targeted specifically toward commodities: row crop, grain, and some specialty crops. The question becomes: is this a temporary bridge so… Read more »