Changes in both the U.S. and global macroeconomic environments can have a significant impact on the bottom line of farms and ranches. For this reason, it is important to be aware of changes in the macroeconomy and to consider how these changes might affect your operation.
Building a Profitable Ranch Business – Beef Cattle Standard Performance Analysis
One of the most essential responsibilities in our businesses is to ensure the economic sustainability of our companies for the future of our business or future generations. Most ranchers have suffered multiple years of low margins due to market prices below the average total economic cost of production. Even today, with a much better prices outlook than a year ago, breakeven prices are still high for most cow-calf operations.
[Read more…] about High Plains Ag Week – 3/15/2023 – Building a Profitable Ranch Business
Inputs costs are expected to stay high in 2023, and the Federal Reserve has indicated that it intends to continue raising interest rates as it attempts to bring inflation under control. So how can you maintain the financial health of your operation in the current economic climate? One tool to consider is financial ratio analysis.
[Read more…] about High Plains Ag Week – 3/8/2023 – Key Financial Ratios to Watch in 2023
The 2023 crop and livestock budgets are now available on the AgriLife Extension Agricultural Economics website. In this post, we’ll look at the budgets for peanuts in Districts 1, 2, and 3. For the most part producers can expect higher revenues; however, expect this increase to be offset by higher input costs.
[Read more…] about High Plains Ag Week – 2/15/2023 – A Look at the 2023 Peanuts Budgets
The 2023 crop and livestock budgets will soon be available for all districts on the AgriLife Extension Agricultural Economics website. Compared to the numbers in the 2022 budgets, revenue from cotton enterprises is expected to remain largely unchanged, while costs are expected to increase.
[Read more…] about High Plains Ag Week – 1/25/2023 – A Look at the 2023 Cotton Budgets
The Livestock Forage Disaster program sign-up deadline is coming by the end of January. Last year’s drought triggered significant payments in most counties of Texas. Read the article for more information about your county’s program and eligibility. [Read more…] about High Plains Ag Week – 1/11/2023 – Livestock Forage Disaster Program
The week was split in to two sections; 1) Price declines from trade worries and 2) price rebounds from continued planting woes. The week started out with precipitous declines in wheat, corn, soybeans, and cotton, all trading on the previous Friday’s new tariffs from the Trump administration and the news of new and increased tariffs on U.S. goods out of Beijing. Dec Corn dropped over 2.0% from Monday open to Tuesday’s low, while wheat and soybeans dropped over the weekend. Once the new bearish news from the tariffs was priced in the fundamentals from delayed plantings and forecasts of more wet weather took hold. See the Soybean and Corn tables below for just how far behind planting is in some key states according to the 5/13/2019 Crop Progress Report. Delayed plantings mean potential for lowered supply, and therefore specs and others begin entering long positions, especially since the price was already so low on the trade spookiness. Dec Corn is showing significant strength as prices rebounded above $4.00 Thursday night. [Read more…] about High Plains Ag Week – 5/17/2019
As of Friday morning, the United States has levied 25% tariffs on nearly one-third of all Chinese products in response to President Xi Jinping of China reportedly reneging on parts of a drafted agreement presented to him post-negotiation by U.S. and Chinese officials. Tariffs and trade disputes have been front-page news for over a year now, and I get questions about them all the time. The details of how tariffs work aren’t hard to understand, but sometimes the economic consequences are. With tariffs back in the news I thought I’d take a moment to explain (written and graphically as we had to do in my graduate trade class) how these tariffs actually work. [Read more…] about ‘It Depends’ – How do all these tariffs actually work?
Lots of red in the contracts of interest section this week. Markets plunged quite a bit this week, largely in response to poor planting progress and the announcement of new reenacted/new tariffs on Chinese goods, which we’ll talk about in ‘It Depends’. Dec. Corn is down approximately 1.22% from the week opening and down 7.92% from its four-month high of $4.04/bu. on February 25. Seasonal trends have corn rising around 70% of years during this period, and slowed planting would normally support that, however high carryover and continued trade tensions seem to be dampening those fundamental signals.