Air November 5, 2003

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. It looks like we're finally getting the kind of freezing weather that we really need to have to end the growing season for everything. Well almost everything. Until we have temperatures well down into the teens bindweed and musk thistle will still be susceptible to spraying so don't think you have to stop just because we've had a little cold weather. You can still keep treating these weed problems as time allows.

Financially, 2003 is going to be a very challenging year. While the price of wheat was not that great, the yield was so we had good income opportunities for the wheat crop. Then the price of cattle went through the roof. The fall harvest looked only mediocre and was often less than that, but then prices started going up. With soybeans running in the mid $7 a bushel range we have a lot of landlords and renters holding soybeans and wondering what to do. In past years the bean crop may not have been sold until after the first of the year. But these prices may very well not hold that long, but then we might have bean crops, and a good wheat crop all sold in one year. And if you marketed normal or above normal numbers of cattle, what kind of a tax liability are you going to put yourself into? The problem, as I see it, is that a lot of people, because they are afraid of that tax liability, are going to make the decision not to sell without ever finding out what the potential liability might be. I don't know how long this soybean rally will last. They took a big hit yesterday, but who knows what they'll do today. What I strongly encourage you to do, before you just decide to do nothing, is to pull together your year to date records, get them in some semblance of order and visit with your accountant or tax preparer. You may not be putting yourself in a tax liability issue by selling your current bean crop now. If you automatically decide not to because you might, then you may very well have missed the best pricing opportunity in several years. The only thing worse than making a bad decision and paying some extra taxes, is to make no decision when you haven't even looked into the possibilities. The idea of good tax management is to not necessarily pay no taxes, but to manage your income and expenses so as to not pay more taxes than necessary. It comes down to management and management comes from informed decision making.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2003.

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