KFMA Podcast

This is a topic we like to cover each year, especially as we are heading into the winter. Tax planning is extremely important for farm businesses because of the potential income volatility from year to year. In this episode, we discuss multiple tools farmers can use to manage their taxable income.

Susie Latta, Marshall County Extension Agent, joins us to talk about all things Medicare! She has a focus in financial management and spends significant time counseling individuals on signing up for Medicare. In this episode we talk about the SHICK (Senior Health Insurance Counseling for Kansas) program and some Medicare basics in general.

https://www.ssa.gov/medicare

https://www.kdads.ks.gov/services-programs/aging/medicare-programs/senior-health-insurance-counseling-for-kansas-shick

SHICK Hotline: 1-800-860-5260

What does a farmer take into account when purchasing equipment? What important factors should they consider? How do equipment purchasing decisions affect profitability? We discuss all of this with Dr. Brady Brewer, Associate Professor in the Ag Economics department at K-State, in this episode of the KFMA podcast. This episode is centered around a recent presentation Dr. Brewer provided at the annual Risk & Profit conference. The link to his slides is below.

Economics of Equipment Purchasing: https://agmanager.info/events/risk-and-profit-conference/previous-conference-proceedings/2024-risk-and-profit-conference/10

We receive several questions about options to save for retirement, and some times about options to contribute to retirement for employees. For this episode, Alice Tunks-Jones, Financial Advisor with Edward Jones, joins us to answer some of those questions. We discussed 5 specific types of retirement accounts, contribution limits and deadlines, and how they pertain to individuals and employers.

Every year, KFMA publishes an executive summary to showcase certain pieces of data for KFMA farms from the prior production year. KFMA Executive Director, Mark Dikeman, and Associate Director, Kellen Liebsch, joined us to share about the 2023 KFMA executive summary. You can find the summary publication at the below link:

https://agmanager.info/kfma/whole-farm-analysis/kfma-executive-summary/2023-executive-summary

Individual association summaries can be found here:

https://agmanager.info/kfma/whole-farm-analysis/kfma-association-summaries

Depreciation is one of the topics on which we receive several questions each year. There are a lot of rules regarding depreciation for tax purposes, but it's also one of the most valuable tax planning tools farmers have available. In this episode, we discuss the basics of depreciation, different rules to be aware of, and how it can be an effective tool for farmers and ranchers.

We hear a lot about cash accounting and accrual accounting, but it can be challenging to know the difference between the two and how they are both used. Kellen Liebsch, Associate Director for KFMA, sits down to talk about the two accounting methods, how they can be utilized, and the pros and cons of each method.

The 20th annual Women Managing the Farm Conference is almost here! We sat down with the committee co-chairs, Sandra Wick and Lori Rogge, to discuss the upcoming conference. We also discussed the history of Women Managing the Farm, the overall goal and vision of the conference, and what to look forward to in the future.

Conference Website: http://womenmanagingthefarm.com/

AgManager: https://agmanager.info/

Dr. Brian Briggeman joined us to discuss farmer cooperatives across the state of Kansas. Dr. Briggeman is a professor and the Director of the Arthur Capper Cooperative Center at K-State. We discussed the history and the current state of co-ops in Kansas. Dr. Briggeman also filled us in on all the services provided for co-ops through the Arthur Capper Cooperative Center.

We sat down with Bob Kohman to discuss a recent KFMA study over machinery and repair costs. Bob and Chelsea conducted this study over the summer with the primary goal of observing the relationship between machinery investment and repair costs on KFMA farms. The data and observations were presented at the annual Risk & Profit Conference at K-State in August.