Overview Agricultural law rarely produces a single headline that captures everything farmers and ranchers need to know. Instead, the most important developments often appear in seemingly unrelated areas such as farm-program eligibility, water rights, agricultural data, secured lending, and neighboring-land disputes. Several recent developments illustrate an important common theme: farmers […]Read more »
Farm Policy
8 posts
Overview Dolly Parton’s death at age 80 offers an opportunity to think about something much larger than the life of a remarkable entertainer. Her story is, in many respects, a story about the enduring importance of the American farm – and about something that much of modern society has forgotten. […]Read more »
Overview The central policy question is not simply how to make beef cheaper. It is how to increase the quantity of beef available to American consumers while preserving the economic incentive for American ranchers to rebuild the cattle herd. That distinction is critical because the present problem is fundamentally a […]Read more »
Overview The historically poor 2026 wheat harvest is serious news for Kansas agriculture. It can mean fewer bushels to sell, less revenue available to cover expenses, and real financial pressure for producers whose operations are heavily dependent upon wheat. But a bad wheat crop and an agricultural economic collapse are […]Read more »
Overview After nearly two years of extensions and legislative stalemate, the Senate’s Farm Bill 2.0 discussion draft has become the primary vehicle for negotiating a comprehensive replacement for the 2018 Farm Bill. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) has expanded the proposal to include more than 100 bipartisan measures […]Read more »
Overview One of the most persistent and frustrating questions raised by farmers is deceptively simple: If natural gas is significantly cheaper today than it was in the late 1990s, why is nitrogen fertilizer so expensive? The answer is complex, but it comes down to an economic principle that markets determine […]Read more »
Overview On June 30, the White House issued an Executive Order 14414 entitled, Advancing Regenerative Agriculture and Strengthening American Farm Resilience.[1] It represents the federal government’s launching of a major new initiative encouraging regenerative agriculture through tax incentives rather than direct regulation. It’s designed to tie into the IRC §45Z […]Read more »
Overview Facing compressed operating margins, elevated interest rates, and fluctuating trade dynamics, producers are increasingly forced to reevaluate their foundational business structures. Operational decisions that once seemed routine – such as signing a bank loan renewal or selling an underutilized combine – now carry sophisticated, sometimes hidden, tax and regulatory […]Read more »