9 minute read
AGRICULTURE
Extension Notes
by University of Missouri Extension
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AGRICULTURAL BUSINESS NEWS AND NOTES
By Joe Koenen
Agricultural Business Specialist
In this article I am writing today I want to discuss a couple of topics: one farmers and landowners should know and another for farmers to know. The first one is critical for nonfarmers to read too. (1) In a recent interview with Dr. Vincent Smith from Montana State University, he says the statement that “farmers never made a living farming” is not a myth. His study showed 80 percent of farm income, on average, comes from sources other than “farming” and that farmers don’t make a living from farming and have not from at least 1960. I hear from non-farmers all the time that farmers are all rich. That is untrue. So where does other income come from for farmers? Off-farm employment, government payments (a big part in 2020), other related businesses, (direct sales, etc.). The old adage “Farmers live poor but die rich” might have some validity here. (2) I am going to talk about another enterprise in farming that farmers do all the time but does not pencil out. Putting up hay (in big bales especially) has never shown a profit. There are reasons to do it if you are feeding it but to sell, it is a loss for most everyone. The budget in the MU system shows a small profit but has yields at 3 ton per acre (2.5 is average) and costs were not updated recently. Furthermore, big bales generally waste anywhere from 20 to 33 percent of the bale. While I am not suggesting you quit putting up hay (although managed grazing and stockpiling help to get there), I am saying to look at your operation to see where you might lower costs without costing yields. ECONOMIC THRESHOLD
Many of you have heard the term “economic threshold” before but I want to quickly address it. It relates to diseases, insects and weeds and at what point the problem causes more economic loss than the cost to control it. It is an important concept for farmers but also for homeowners. Sometimes homeowners are more interested in “getting revenge” than anything but using the economic threshold makes economic sense as well as helping the environment.
Remember if you have a question or need assistance, contact the Livingston County Extension Office at (660) 646-0811 for help.
While agricultural education continues to be extremely important for today’s youth, not all students get the opportunity to have hands-on agricultural learning experiences at a young age. Thanks to Chula Farmers’ Cooperative that is changing for the elementary students in their community.
Thanks to the Chula Farmers Coop, the Livingston County R-3 School at Chula was able to receive the Corteva Agriscience Community Betterment Grant, which is funded by Corteva Agriscience.
This grant is designed to fund the programs and projects of non-profit organizations that support the Community Investment Purpose Pillars. Those pillars include empowering women, enabling youth and engaging communities.
The school plans to start a program, “Elementary Aggies.” The grant funds will be put toward implementing agricultural/environmental lessons and activities, as well as expanding the school’s community garden.
“Attending Chula School as a child, I never felt as if I ‘missed out’ on certain things. But, looking back, I can see where there were some opportunities that larger surrounding school’s students were given that we were not, due to the lack of funding that many small schools struggle with,” said Victoria Overton, a Pioneer sales representative at the Chula Coop. “I am excited to have the opportunity to be involved in giving back to Chula School, and granting students opportunities that would otherwise be impossible. I hope it piques their interest in agriculture at a young age, because they are the future of the ag industry and the world.”
Submitted Photo
Megan Hardy, center, previous Livingston Co. R-3 principal, is pictured with Chula Farmers Coop Pioneer Seed sales representatives Victoria Overton, left, and Shayler Keller, right.
Largest Meat Producer Back Online After Cyberattack
DETROIT (AP) — The world's largest meat processing company has resumed most production after a weekend cyberattack, but experts say the vulnerabilities exposed by this attack and others are far from resolved.
In a statement late Wednesday, the FBI attributed the attack on Brazilbased meat processor JBS SA to REvil, a Russian-speaking gang that has made some of the largest ransomware demands on record in recent months. The FBI said it will work to bring the group to justice and it urged anyone who is the victim of a cyberattack to contact the bureau immediately.
REvil has not posted anything related to the hack on its dark web site. But that’s not unusual. Ransomware syndicates as a rule don’t post about attacks when they are in initial negotiations with victims — or if the victims have paid a ransom.
In October, a REvil representative who goes by the handle “UNKN” said in an interview published online that the agriculture sector would now be a main target for the syndicate. REvil also threatened to auction off sensitive stolen data from victims who refused to pay it.
The attack targeted servers supporting JBS’s operations in North America and Australia. Backup servers weren’t affected and the company said it was not aware of any customer, supplier or employee data being compromised.
JBS said late Wednesday said that it expects to resume production at all its plants on Thursday and be running at “close to full capacity” across its global operations.
It is not known if JBS paid a ransom. The company hasn’t discussed it in public statements, and did not respond to phone and email messages Wednesday seeking comment.
The FBI and the White House declined to comment on the ransom. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday the U.S. is considering all options in dealing with the attack and that President Joe Biden intends to confront Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, about his nation's harboring of ransomware criminals when the two meet in Europe in two weeks.
“I can assure you that we are raising this through the highest levels of the U.S. government,” she said.
While there is no evidence Russia benefits financially from ransomware crime — which has hit health care, education and state and local governments especially hard during the pandemic — U.S. officials say its practitioners have sometimes worked for Kremlin security services.
Ransomware expert Allan Liska of the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said JBS was the largest food manufacturer yet to be hit by ransomware, in which criminal hackers paralyze entire networks by scrambling their data. But he said at least 40 food companies have been targeted by ransomware gangs over the last year, including brewer Molson Coors and E & J Gallo Winery.
Food companies, Liska said, are at “about the same level of security as manufacturing and shipping. Which is to say, not very.”
The attack was the second in a month on critical U.S. infrastructure. Earlier in May, hackers believed to operate with impunity in Russia and allied states shut down operation of the Colonial Pipeline, the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, for nearly a week. The closure sparked long lines and panic buying at gas stations across the Southeast. Colonial Pipeline confirmed it paid $4.4 million to the hackers, who then turned over a software decryption key.
Cybersecurity experts said the attacks targeting critical sectors of the U.S. economy are evidence that industry hasn’t been taking years of repeated warnings seriously.
Cybercriminals previously active in online ID theft and bank fraud moved into ransomware in the mid2010s as programmers developed sophisticated programs that permitted the software’s more efficient dissemination.
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Sixth District U.S. Rep. Sam Graves 1415 Longworth House Bldg. Washington D.C. 20515 Phone: 202-225-7041
SAVING THE FAMILY FARM
Farming is a family business. It always has been. Most farmers have been working cattle, working the land, and feeding the world from the time they could walk. They’ve lived their entire lives working endless hours to live their dream, carry on the family farm, and hopefully pass it along to their children in better shape than when they inherited it. The President’s death tax proposal threatens to upend all of that.
The death tax is something I’ve been fighting for years. It just doesn’t make sense. We work all our lives to scrape by, pay taxes all along the way, and then hopefully pass something along to our children. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the federal government thinks it’s owed something when we die. Death shouldn’t be a taxable event.
The latest proposal on the table is much worse than that. Eliminating the stepped-up basis—a little known tax provision most of us only learn about when we lose a parent or loved one— would, in-effect, supercharge the existing death tax.
Here’s how it would work. Let’s say a farmer bought 1,000 acres in 1987 for $680 per acre. Then, they pass away in 2021 and that land is worth $4,903 per acre. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, their descendants would owe a $0 tax bill on that. Under this new plan, they could owe about $1.5 million in capital gains taxes alone. Most farmers, including those with much larger farms than 1,000 acres don’t have that kind of cash sitting around. They’re land rich, but cash poor. In agriculture, it takes a lot of money just to make a little. That could force some families to sell off massive portions of the farm just to pay the tax bill. Others, if they can’t get the land sold in time, could wind up watching the farm their parents, grandparent, and generations of their family built be sold on the courthouse steps. It’s heartbreaking and it could mean the end of the family farm as we know it. Now, the Administration has promised a special carve-out for small businesses and family farms where the next generation keeps running the business or farm. What they haven’t done is offered any real concrete proposal to do that. Farmers have heard plenty of these empty promises before. I’m from the Show-Me State. I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then, we should all stand up and make our voices heard. We cannot afford to let this happen. We’ve already lost far too many family farms, and this could good well be the final nail in the coffin. I won’t sit silent and watch this happen.
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