Agricultural Business Management News

The 2018 Farm Bill in available for sign up now until March 16, 2020. If a farmer fails to sign up by this date, their farms will be enrolled the same way they were in the previous 2014 Farm Bill. They will not receive a payment if one is due in 2019, if they do not sign up before the deadline. Farmers - be sure to sign up before the deadline.   At this time, farmers are signing up for the first two years of the Farm Bill 2019 and 2020 and then they will be permitted each year thereafter for the last three years. Farmers can chose between three choices: ARC-CO:   Agricultural Risk Coverage – County                      Revenue coverage based on national price and county yield PLC:   Price Loss Coverage             Price coverage based only on national reference price ARC-IC:   Agricultural Risk Coverage – Individual                  Whole farm program, all crops planted by each FSA farm number must be ARC-IC                  and payment based on crops plante

At the end of each year for the last twenty-five years, a survey has been conducted of farmland sales in fourteen southwestern Minnesota counties. The survey reports bare farm land sales to non-related parties for the first six months of each year. Land values had been steadily increasing until 2014. After reaching record high prices in 2013, the upward trend was broken as prices declined in 2014 and continued down through 2017. The trend changed to an increase in 2018 and remained constant in 2019. The summary report for this survey is available at the county extension offices in Chippewa, Cottonwood, Jackson, Lac qui Parle, Lincoln, Lyon, Martin, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone, Redwood, Rock, Watonwan and Yellow Medicine counties.   This year, the decrease across the fourteen counties averaged 0.2%. SW Minnesota land prices peaked at $8,466 per acre and then declined through 2017 to $6,340 until increasing in 2018 to $6,589 and declined slightly to $6,576 in 2019. The largest incre

The Farm Resource Guide for 2020 is now available at many University of Minnesota Extension County offices across the state. This resource guide includes a wide variety of useful farm business management information including the following items: Custom rates: What to charge for planting, etc. Average farmland rental rates by county: From two sources with projections for 2020. Flexible rental agreements: Examples of how they work and how they have worked in past. Lease forms for cash rent and share rent arrangements: Which you can fill in the blanks. Farmland sales information for all counties in Minnesota: Lists current average ag sales. Information on charges for custom feeding, commodity storage, leasing buildings and various bin rental rates: List various costs, like leasing a dairy barn and machine storage.  Current information on pasture rental rates, tree timber values: List pasture rates and timber sales. Marketing inf