Episode 85: Farm Management Strategies for 2025

Main Topics Covered

1. Crop Economics and Financial Outlook for 2025: 
   • Input costs, fertilizer, and crop protection chemicals. 
   • Margin outlook for commodity crops and challenges with cash rents. 
2. Farm Financial Analysis: 
   • Importance of balance sheets and accounting systems. 
   • Pitfalls of cash accounting and the need for accrual-adjusted accounting. 
3. Benchmarking and Farm Records:
   • Ohio Farm Business Analysis and Benchmarking Program. 
   • Importance of detailed chart of accounts and enterprise analysis. 
4. Resources and Tools:
   • OSU Farm Office resources, including enterprise budgets and cash rent figures. 
   • Corn silage pricing tool and Coffee and Grain Marketing webinars.  

 

Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:08):Welcome to AgCredit Said It, your go-to podcast for insights on farm finance and maximizing your return on investment. Join us as we talk to industry leaders, financial experts, and area farmers, bringing you skillful advice and strategies to grow your farm's financial future ag credit setting where farm finance goes beyond the balance sheet.

Phil Young (00:38):Hey, this is Phil Young with AgCredit Said It. We are here live at the Emerge Conference 2025, and we're able to snag one of the speakers today, Barry Ward, and so wanted to catch him here after his presentation on Friday and just catch a glimpse of what he presented today, some highlights and snapshots, and just share his background and what he had to share with our Emerge guest today. So welcome, Barry.

Barry Ward (01:02):Thank you. It's great to be here and it's a pleasure interacting with all of you. And boy, you guys have a great group here today.

Phil Young (01:10):Yeah, thank you. Awesome. Well, can you give listeners a little bit of background on you and your position and kind of what you spoke about today?

Barry Ward (01:16):Sure. Yeah. I'm currently working at Ohio State University, and I work in the area mostly of extension, and most of the work that I do is in farm management, which includes mostly economics, crop and land economics as well as tax education. So those are kind of my key areas as well as teaching an undergraduate course on campus. So part of what I've been doing most of the winter is addressing audiences across the state, including this one of course, and just talking about some of the key fundamentals that are going to be important for farmers.

Phil Young (01:49):Nice. Okay. Yeah,

Barry Ward (01:50):You want to give

Phil Young (01:51):A few highlights of what you spoke about today?

Barry Ward (01:53):Absolutely. Yeah. I mean the things that, some of this is not news as you know.

Phil Young (01:58):Sure.

Barry Ward (01:59):We're just trying to follow what's going on in this particular area, mainly crop economics. So we're looking at what has happened this last year, and also trying to put the best picture out there for what might producers experience in 2025 in corn and soybean and wheat production, what we're expecting. So we talked a fair amount about input costs, what our growers are experiencing all the way from last summer as they started to make buying decisions and started to lock in some things on seed and fertilizer and chemical and locking in cash, rents that continue to move higher. So the picture that we talked about today in the session was that overall our cost structure is probably going to be mostly flat this year in 2025. And looking at some of the differences, fertilizer costs which continue to move higher are going to be a key consideration for some growers. Some growers, some farmers bought fertilizer last summer fall that had the option to buy, whether they had storage or whether they could put money out there. Those price points were a little bit lower than what they're probably going to experience between now and planting crop protection chemicals. We highlighted that that's one of the costs that farmers will probably see a little bit lower in 25 as compared to 24 on average as far as the price per unit, but they're faced with a challenging year,

Phil Young (03:31):And

Barry Ward (03:31):That's one of the things that we talked about and kind of towards the end, talking about the big picture margin outlook for most of our commodity crops, for those acres that farmers are cash renting from others and paying a market rate for that cash rent, they're going to find it being really challenging to find profit this year for those acres that they own, don't have any debt, perhaps they're going to find some positive margins on some of those acres. But generally speaking, with these lower crop prices that we're faced with and the uncertainty surrounding these crop prices due to a number of factors, south American production, what's going on here in the US in terms of the tariff environment and what we might expect throughout the rest of this year. There's a number of variables that it's really hard to see. It's hard to see what's going to happen because some of these variables are, well, there's a lot of ways that they can move, so

Phil Young (04:39):We'll see. It just seems like you flip open your phone in the morning and see what's going on in the news and you're like, man, what's something else? It's a little bit of whiplash and it is. You are like, well, you can, it's hard to plan, I guess, and I think that's kind of what your point. I mean, it's just the variability of it. It's not one thing, it's 20 things,

Barry Ward (04:56):Right? Yeah. It's a lot of uncertainty and farmers are, I think, well, they're pretty tough customers and they're going to be able to manage this, and luckily we've had, not necessarily last year, but the two years prior, we had the opportunity as long as we had weather to find some profitability last year, it was a challenging year for most of Ohio with some of the yields that we experienced and some of the dry weather. But these crop prices with the existing cost structure that farmers are having to deal with, it's a challenge and they're going to have to really tighten their belt, look to be refocus on being a low cost producer. That's one of the things we talked about in the session is reminder to we're commodity producers. So to survive in the long run, being that low cost producer has got to be one of the things that they focus on.

Phil Young (05:53):It's the things you can control as a producer and dread on the stuff you can't control. That's

Barry Ward (05:59):Right. And looking at return on investment of all those inputs that they might be including in an acre of corn or soybeans. It looks a little bit different at four and a quarter corn than it did at six bucks. So just thinking through all those things is going to be important

Phil Young (06:16):As you do presentations, and I've seen a number of yours throughout the last few years. What's a common question? I have kind of a two part question. What's a common question you hear a lot and what's a question maybe? Well, actually I'll ask that first. What's a common question you hear out a group when you do a session like this?

Barry Ward (06:37):Well, one of the things that tends to come up is questions on cash rents

Phil Young (06:46):And

Barry Ward (06:46):How to manage that particular cost piece, which is a difficult piece obviously, and one that's a challenge for anyone that's cash renting land where there's a lot of competition. That's something that we've talked about for several years. Growers can get ahead of that to a certain degree if they're offering some balance or some bonus perhaps in some of those good years. I think landlords are a little bit more amenable to having a conversation when things get a little bit tight if they are involved in some of those high margin periods, or at least they're compensated maybe a little bit. Some things that have come out, I guess, and we dip into taxes a little bit. That's been a top topic, just trying to get a feel for how to manage for this next year and beyond. But there's too many variables to know on that particular issue. And we talk a lot about fertilizer that's been a volatile sector here in the last couple of years, and we're getting questions on a number of things there. So yeah, I guess it's a mixed bag.

Phil Young (07:55):Yeah, I bet. Yeah. And I guess my second question is, what's a question that maybe doesn't get asked or a topic you think, Hey, we really, this should be talked about more and it's maybe not, and kind of the topics you talk about or do you try to, there's nothing out there that maybe doesn't go unsaid?

Barry Ward (08:12):No. I'm sure there's some things that some unconventional ways to manage costs. Some farmers are already engaged in groups that are buying groups, but there may be some opportunities in some communities or in some areas where producers, farmers can maybe find some savings by being a part of a buying group. Those don't exist everywhere, but there's a number of things that it seems like at the end of every presentation that I wish I would've touched on a little bit more.

(08:50):It's always something, but the audiences are pretty sharp and they're on it, and they ask some tough questions sometimes that, especially in the area of those things that don't have easy answers. I know this year, property taxes, current ag use valuation, that program that's affected so many of us across the state with higher property taxes, that's been one that we've had to talk about, doesn't have any easy answers. The Ohio legislature I know is continuing to have discussions on how they might more well have a better structure in terms of how those assets are valued, but I don't know. I'm not sure where they're going with that, but they've got their work cut out for 'em.

Phil Young (09:37):Yeah, and I can't remember, do you dip in the topic of taxes quite a bit?

Barry Ward (09:42):I do. You do? Okay. I do our income tax schools with, I'm the director of are working with tax professionals across the state each year, and there've been a number of factors or a number of issues that we've tried to address and some really, really hairy ones because there's promoters out there across the Midwest that are promoting certain tax strategies that are

Phil Young (10:08):Borderline. I think we maybe talk about the same thing here. I guess the nutrient write off, I guess. I don't know if that's what, I guess any

Barry Ward (10:16):Residual fertility deduction.

Phil Young (10:18):Yes.

Barry Ward (10:18):That continues to be a hot topic in farm country because there's promoters out there that are really aggressive in contacting producers and their tax preparers. So we're dealing with a lot of those questions. And there is some we call best management practices. So if a person's going to look at utilizing this tax deduction where if they buy or inherit a farm that's got pretty high levels of P and k, then they probably have an argument and they can probably use a strategy where they can take those deductions on that excess fertility. So there's good ways to carry out that deduction strategy. And then there's some more aggressive kinds of things that might get them scrutinized in an audit and they might have a bad outcome.

Phil Young (11:11):Sure. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, a couple years ago the, I can't remember what you called it, residual or

Barry Ward (11:19):Excess fertility deduction.

Phil Young (11:21):Yes. That was kind of a new thing I think a few years ago. And here lately I kind of popped up and I've had more conversations about it. Obviously it's tax time, and it seemed like some accountants are gung-ho about it, and some are like, ah, I'd rather you not counseling against it. So I was curious after it's kind of been talked about for a few years, if there's been, it seems like it's still a gray area.

Barry Ward (11:43):It is. It is. And there's not much guidance. There's nothing specific. I mean, there's some specific language in the tax code that allows deductions for fertilizer in that, of course is utilized to then take the next step to take this deduction. There's a couple of minor pieces that tax preparers and attorneys will use to justify this deduction, but unfortunately, we haven't had any court cases in the tax courts that have given us anything that's black and white. There's no bright line test as they call it, for giving us the okay or the stop sign as far as claiming this deduction. Until we do, we're going to continue to have this gray area.

Phil Young (12:34):Yeah. Yeah. Just depends on your risk appetite. I, that's

Barry Ward (12:37):Exactly right. How hungry are some producers are willing to take more. And the same with some accountants and tax preparers. Some are a little more conservative than others.

Phil Young (12:48):Yeah. We'll get good. Hey, thanks for joining us here, and thanks for coming to emerge. Thanks for presenting. I know everyone here appreciate your talks and just learns a lot. So thank you, sir.

Barry Ward (12:56):I appreciate it. And it's great to talk to you and hopefully everyone has a great year.

Phil Young (13:01):Yep. Good deal. Thanks sir.

Barry Ward (13:02):Thank you.

Phil Young (13:04):Yeah. To follow up my conversation with Barry, we are now talking with Bruce Clevinger with OSU extension. Bruce was also a guest speaker at Emerge this year. Welcome, Bruce.

Bruce Clevenger (13:13):Hey, thanks, Phil.

Phil Young (13:14):Yeah, Bruce. Yeah. Can you share a little bit about your role at OSU and what you do there?

Bruce Clevenger (13:20):Yeah. I've worked for OSU for just over 30 years now. Most of that was as a county extension educator, which you get to do a little bit of everything at a county extension office. Everything from production, and my passion also there at the county was farm management. But in the last few years, I was able to join the farm office team at Ohio State and become a field specialist specifically in farm management. And what that means is a field specialist supports county educators doing their part in farm management education, everything our team works on from farm succession planning to budgeting and record keeping. And there's, we have great attorneys on our team as well for the ag law resource program.

Phil Young (14:08):Nice. And that's a website I direct people to all the time. And so it's always fun to point young farmers to that if they haven't heard about it and it's like, Hey, there's just a ton of data there that you can st soak up and weed through and get to know the stuff. So I appreciate your team for doing that. So yeah, emerge you had a great presentation, wanted to walk through share for people who maybe weren't able to go to emerge, what that content is. Can you walk through maybe some of the highlights of what you talked about? I think one of the big ones was just accounting and the balance sheet, and give us a good preview of what you talked about.

Bruce Clevenger (14:43):Yeah. I mean, so many of us in production agriculture are asked to do a balance sheet every year. Well, there's so much in farm financial analysis beyond the balance sheet. We think of it maybe as a, I dunno, evil necessity, why does the lender need this information from me? But it's a sound financial document. It's one of those financial statements that is essential for the business, the industry of agriculture to have really accounting principles and standards of which we operate within from the lender standpoint, but also that supports the producer. So my talk was really how do we build a good balance sheet? And that really can start with an accounting system and an accounting system. We really need to have a chart of accounts that really describes income and expenses. And so everybody's chart of account across Ohio and the Midwest might have a little bit different looking chart of accounts because our farms may act a little different, but the basics are that we need to record income and expenses as it relates at a minimum to that IRS tax return, but we can do more than just a tax return as well.

(15:59):My talk also talked a little bit about the pitfalls of just doing cash accounting in the farm business and then talking a little bit about working capital, some of those fun things that accountants and lenders, we get to work in that space.

Phil Young (16:16):Sure. Yeah. I guess could we take a deeper dive into balance sheets and why we've kind of talked before about just looking at a cashflow by itself doesn't quite make sense. We need to pair it with their balance sheet. Can we dive into that topic a little bit? Yeah,

Bruce Clevenger (16:31):Yeah, sure. There's two measures that the balance sheet will help us measure on the farm. One is a liquidity measure, and it is talking about that current ratio or what we would call the working capital, essentially described as is there enough cash on the farm related to the revenue that the business generates or that the expenses that the business does incur. And so it can be a calculation that can soften at times, and I can compare maybe a year's worth of data from 2023 to the calendar year 2024 analysis because we've seen some of the changes that have happened in the grow crop economy when it comes to what maybe our balance sheets might look like. So working capital in 2023 compared to working capital in 2024 has weakened in the state of Ohio for two reasons. To calculate working capital, we have to calculate our current assets on the farm, things that we can turn into cash, like our checking account balances, our savings inventories that can immediately go to market and turn into cash.

(17:42):And so those have actually declined from 2023 to 2024. Mainly it's there's a little bit less cash in the checking account. Maybe there's some bushels that have been sold or the value of those bushels are now lower in 2024 compared to 2023. And then the other side of the working capital conversation or calculation is the current liabilities. And in fact, in the OSU dataset, we see a little bit of increase in that current liabilities, meaning we might owe just a little bit more for the calendar year 2024 compared to the full year prior in 2023. So we put those two together, the current assets and the current liabilities, and it's a simple math deduction. The working capital then softened from 23 to 24, almost 20%. And so that's an indication that times have changed. And I speak to those prior years because those are complete years of analysis. I know we're in 2025 now, but some of the analysis that a farm needs to do needs to look at that calendar year of kind of looking backwards in the rear view mirror and saying, how did I perform in 2024? And then maybe compare to the prior year of 2023 and put some numbers on it and compare it against some benchmarks and see how I'm doing as a manager or my team is doing as a farm management team on the farm.

Phil Young (19:15):I mean working capital, it's one of those strong measures. It is just a good telltale measure of where we're sitting. And then what happened? Did you eat up some of that working capital? Was stuff more expensive? Did you take on more debt? Like you said, were grain prices just not as strong? And so the value of the grain union, the bin just wasn't as good. And so yeah, I've had some people that had credit tell me before, you can almost get more out of a balance sheet than you can a tax return. Sometimes it almost tells you more.

Bruce Clevenger (19:48):And then the solvency ratio as well, the debt to asset ratio that people talk about that too has weakened in our data set from 2023 to 2024, there's standard percentages of debt to asset ratio. We'd like to see a 30% or less for a debt to asset ratio, and that number climbed a little from 2023 to 2024 in our dataset from that 31% and it climbed to 35%, which is not in the right direction. We'd like to see a 30% or lower would be a green light. Now 31 to 35% is still in that cautionary kind of needs some attention. And if it continues to worsen or increase, then it gets into kind of that red area in our stoplight approach of green, yellow, and red on indications of really what do these ratios tell us about our position, our financial position on the farm.

Phil Young (20:46):Can you walk through that percentage a little bit, how you come up with that calculation a little bit?

Bruce Clevenger (20:50):Yeah. So the debt to asset ratio is kind of a percentage of what percentage of the business do I own. And so if I own outright or my debt to asset ratio, how much does that ratio indicate? So the debt to asset ratio, how much debt do I have compared to my assets? And so if I have 30% or less debt, I'm in a relatively strong position on the farm, but if my debt is increasing and that percentage is growing greater than 30% compared to all of my assets and all of my liabilities, then I get a little bit more vulnerable in the financial position long-term in calculating something like we might know of as net worth over time as well.

Phil Young (21:43):Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of shifting topics, you kind of talked about the pitfalls of cash accounting. What are those pitfalls and can you walk us through that?

Bruce Clevenger (21:53):Well, there's a lag time. So if we just look at our tax return and maybe a tax return, our goal is to, well, I wanted to make it look like I did last year and satisfy the IRS and get through that process of a tax return. But cash accounting sometimes can be reflected in that tax return. But cash accounting essentially records income as it's received and records expenses as it goes out. Cash accounting may not take into account, it doesn't take into account changes in inventories that are happening on the farm. It doesn't necessarily capture accounts payable and accounts receivable. It doesn't really capture all of the declining inventory of assets. So the pitfalls of cash accounting, it kind of ignores the fact in some of the slippery slopes we might get into that if, yeah, I have cash in, I have about the same amount of cash from the year prior as I do today, but maybe it's because the farm has built up some accounts payable.

(22:56):I essentially owe more people money, but from a cash account, it looks the same in my checkbook. The other thing might be I have sold some assets and I've used the sale of those assets to finance the farm, and so I'm cash flush yet. But over time, maybe also I'm not replacing worn out assets or machinery on the farm. So in a matter of time, if by doing just a cash accounting system, those three examples might catch up to us in a matter of two to three or maybe four years. So cash accounting by itself, there's a lag time that if ignored can then all of a sudden reveal some immediate challenges on the farm. Whereas if we did some accrual adjusted accounting, we can foresee that, oh, there's an indication here that profitability is slipping and our position financially on the farm is different and we need to make some adjustments on the farm.

Phil Young (24:03):And specifically on this topic, I know that you are kind of working kind of a benchmarking project with farmers, and I think, can you talk a little bit about that and maybe if anyone, I think is it open to anybody and kind of how maybe can farmers participate or learn more about it?

Bruce Clevenger (24:22):Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I'm a team member of that team. Our leader is Clint Schrader, he's our program manager for the Ohio Farm Business Analysis and Benchmarking Program. So there is two components to this program. Farm Business Analysis helps farms take their farm accounting output that a farm would already be using for the tax season and takes it to the next level and produces those financial documents that are important. The balance sheet, the accrual adjusted income statement, those are two big products of that program. And so the farm business analysis, producing those financial documents allows then those standards to be compared. And who makes the standards? Well, the Farm Financial Standards Council is an entity here in the Midwest, and it's been established since the farm crisis of the 1980s because there was a need then, and the need continues to remain that we need to benchmark, we need to compare our farms against what are good practices and good performance recommendations and standards for farm businesses.

(25:44):So I think it's very unique and special that we have such a program of the Farm Financial Standards Council in the United States, so that we as producers, we as accountants and lenders, we all have this ability to have a standard to compare against, because farms can be really good at a lot of things, and then there may be a few of those indicators, maybe two of the 12 ratios that really need some attention and work on, especially if that farm is going to transition to the next generation. What about addressing those before we just transition that business to the next generation and expect the next son or daughter to figure it out? And so the farm financial standards can really be helpful. So then the second part of the program is benchmarking. Benchmarking really relates to how am I doing compared to my peers anonymously, of course.

(26:52):And so Phil, let's say you and I are both 1000 acre corn, soybean and wheat farmers in northwest Ohio. So from an anonymous standpoint, you and I could be in this peer group that says, all my financial income and expenses are shared into this program, but then I get to benchmark. How am I doing compared to my peers? Am I in the top 20%? Am I in the middle 40%? Am I in the lower 10%? I know that adds up to 80%, but where am I at in that range of each of these different categories? How am I doing on yield, cost of fertilizer, machinery, cost per acre? We can benchmark that and say, from this anonymous group, here's my benchmark numbers and how I'm doing. And it relates to how some decision making can be done on the farm to improve those areas.

Phil Young (27:53):Nice. I can't remember off the top of my head, but has this been going on long enough where maybe you've had some success stories of some outcomes of guys that have submitted their data and being able to review it and say, gosh, based on this data, I have some decisions to make. Are there any outcomes from that?

Bruce Clevenger (28:15):And there are some, there's several, and they're so individual too that it's hard to paint a blanket across, but some have decided to exit the business. As we look at Ohio agriculture, one of the industries that we see shrinking number of farms, unfortunately, or by necessity, are the number of dairy farms. So it's a hard decision, and we all have maybe known a family that have had to exit the dairy industry, and it's not an easy decision, but there are times when that is the right decision for the current farm family, and it's also the right decision for the next generation to remain on the farm. And so the output of the analysis and the benchmarking doesn't necessarily lead to rainbow's, unicorn, and shin days. It may lead to some tough decisions that need to be made that in fact avoid consequences that are destructive to the financial wellbeing of that family longterm.

Phil Young (29:24):Gotcha. Yeah, it's kind of a preview of maybe what's ahead and you can kind of avoid some disaster. Nice. Okay. Yeah. The other thing I think you kind of talked about in your session was just farm records, whether that's accounting records or farm records. Can you share a little bit about maybe some tips on those side of things?

Bruce Clevenger (29:44):Yeah, I think I mentioned earlier the chart of accounts and the chart of accounts has to be structured for the type of the farm and having a chart of accounts, a level of detail that's going to be useful for the family. So at a minimum, we would have a chart of accounts that aligns with the Schedule F. So come tax season, we can have an output from our accounting system that easily generates the income and expense numbers necessary to file our required tax return. And that's great. The next level of detail, we might need to want to make a little bit more detailed chart of accounts. My one example I often use is the IRS has this expense line called fertilizer and lime. Well, as producers, we know that there's a big difference between what fertilizer does and what Lyme does. We also know that there's multiple types of fertilizers that are used on the farm, and so a chart of accounts might further detail out the differences.

(30:50):The IRS doesn't care, they just want one number for the tax return, but as a farm manager, we may want to know and utilize that information to do some cost management, purchasing power, some information about forecasting into the next year about what types and quantities of fertilizers we're actually using on the farm, and we can pull that right from our accounting system. The third level of detail I like to call the enterprise analysis. So again, with my fertilizer example, assigning that fertilizer cost to a specific enterprise, so nitrogen, we might purchase nitrogen for the wheat crop. Well, we also might purchase for the corn crop of course, and having a chart of accounts that just doesn't separate the types of fertilizer, but also assigns it to the enterprise or the commodity at which it belongs to, that's going to become very important when we start talking then about farm financial analysis at the enterprise level. And some accounting systems can go even further and not only assign it to the crop, but the location of where it's grown. So the Smith Farm down the road, our farm at home, the rented farm, the township away identifying not just what and what was the input, but where it was grown, because my cash rent might be different at each of those locations. And I need to really have a good analysis of not just the commodity grown, but where I'm putting that input into which crop.

Phil Young (32:30):Nice. That is good. Yeah, that's good info. Yeah, that's really good. Okay. Yeah. And the other thing, we kind of talked about this at the beginning of the episode a little bit about maybe the tools at kind of the OSU Farm office, enterprise budgets, cash rent figures. Barry and I talked a little bit about that, but anything, any highlights from maybe the farm office website or resources there that you hear a lot of feedback from that help guys with information?

Bruce Clevenger (33:02):Yeah, I think once we get into summer here in 2025, we kind of think about that discussion of cash leasing or crop share leasing arrangements that occur in Ohio. Barry and I and our attorney teams, we will stick to the fact that there are advantages for both parties, the landowner and the tenant operator to have those leasing agreements in writing. My example would be, I have two funerals this week. What does a funeral, either within a family or external to the family, how does that affect farmland leasing or having access to that farmland? Does a verbal agreement stand the test of a funeral or a death of a party for the business? Does that complicate that lease agreement that was verbal? Or do we have a really strong fair lease agreement that's binding to heirs? It's fair to both parties? It's negotiable throughout time. There is a stigma to written lease agreements that there's going to be an advantage to one party over the other, and it's not the case. In fact, verbal agreements have caused more court cases than written agreements over time when it comes to farmland, acquisitions and leasing.

Phil Young (34:32):Yeah, I can't speak highly enough of just written documents, whether it's writing rental agreements, whether, and I think there's a stigma of even having written down documents within a family, parents and kids and grandparents. I've seen a lot of issues come about with just not having stuff written down, and it feels icky and businessy, but I think it saves a lot of heartache and a lot of frustration and resentment down the road. So I completely agree with what you said.

Bruce Clevenger (35:06):And another example of that would be an operating agreement for an LLC or any kind of business entity that we think is right for our farm, but what is the operating agreement within that entity that really can support the intent of having that business entity structure in the business?

(35:30):Another interesting tool, Phil, that's available for this summer, it's linked from our website. It's a corn silage pricing tool. So in times when farm income, it seems to have shrunk and it continues to shrink a bit, there may be ways to consider how do I sell my field of corn, not just for grain, but what if I am offered to chop that corn for silage and how do we price it? Where do we start? And so everything from the cost of harvest to shrink and disappearance, quality and quantities, price of corn, what are all those adjustments? How do we negotiate? OSU has developed, OSU extension has developed a corn silage pricing tool that can help answer those types of questions. And that's a handy one for a few that have that opportunity to maybe market corn the whole plant differently than just by way of grain.

Phil Young (36:30):Nice. Yeah, that's good to know. I didn't know that was out there. Okay. Well, good. Yeah. Any other, as we wrap up here, Bruce, any other topics or things you wanted to share with our podcast listeners before we wrap things up?

Bruce Clevenger (36:44):So a quarterly update is being offered, it's titled Coffee and Grain Marketing, and there'll be quarterly updates from Dr. Sin Lee throughout the course of the summer when the WDI report is released. Upcoming ones are going to be in August and November, and that resource is available at the Farm Office website to pre-register for those. It's a free online webinar. It's titled Coffee and Grain Marketing, because it starts at seven 30 in the morning, but if folks aren't available at that time, they are recorded and they can watch it the very next day. And so Coffee and Grain Marketing with Dr. Sin Keely provides a little additional insight into where we stand grain marketing wise.

Phil Young (37:29):Nice. Okay. Well good. Well, Bruce, thank you so much for all the work you do, for all the information you guys put together and you and your team. And I think you just make agriculture a little bit easier for guys out there with the information you guys provide. So I appreciate it.

Bruce Clevenger (37:43):Appreciate you very much, Phil. Thank you so much. Thanks to Ag Credit.

Phil Young (37:47):Yep, no problem. Alright, thanks for our listeners out there. Just another great episode of Ag Credit. Set it and we'll be with you next time. Thanks guys.

Speaker 1 (38:03):Thank you for listening to AgCredit Said It. Be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app or join us through our website at AgCredit.net so you never miss an episode.