55 Years And Counting From The Tractor Seat By bill whitman We live in a time like never before, and if you’re like me, you have a real problem wrapping your head around the changes. We’ve had tough times, the late 90’s, early 80’s, and every year, ups and downs we all have to deal with as we try and keep our families healthy and cared for. Add that to an economy, that in my opinion, is pulling equity out of agriculture faster than we can replace it, there is one change that I believe we can get a handle on. I recently read that over half of the farmers and ranchers in the country do not have their taxes filed by a CPA or accountant specializing in agriculture. I don’t think that this is a practice that will be practical or even possible in the future. The tax code is so complex and doubly so for agriculture. Add to this the need for succession planning and the mom-and-pop bookkeeping service is well over their head, no matter how well intentioned. For those bookkeeping services that wish to do right by clients, there are specialized agriculture services that offer their help to accounting businesses, even smaller agencies. On our farm we use a soil sampling service that provides us with fertilizer rates that maximize our land’s potential. Anymore fertilizer and we’re just trading dollars. In a sense this is risk management. Especially when we’re losing money with our grains, we need to know the minimum we can spend to make a crop. I suggest that if more of us would be working towards a business model like this, we may also have an impact on the market. Although we will produce quantity less than our ability, we will come closer to being capable of mitigating losses on our operations. We need to integrate our numbers for use in every facet of our farms and ranches. I’d like to see a service that can provide a data management covering everything from agronomy plans to tax planning, with one caveat, they are independent from any input service to maintain an unbiased base. Without a doubt we’re going to see our major input suppliers develop “whole farm” management programs where they will offer to help us with financial and tax decisions. I really question the wisdom of considering this but having watch so many embraces other facets of management of our farms, they will find themselves in even more control of American agriculture than they have now. So, here’s the two-edged sword, we need the data to make hard decisions which can determine the financial stability of our farms and ranches but for most of us, this means opening our personal finances to strangers to develop the data we need. My issue is that there is already so much of our farms data that we don’t understand, how is adding to that burden going to help us? It’s time to start asking questions and have the understanding to use the answers to make the best decisions for our own farms. In a following article I’ll present suggestions for questions needed asked and answered. Horse Sense: Time is our most asset. Use it wisely. IndianaAg@bluemarble.net
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