2023 Year in Review
2023 Year in Review
We do a summary of the 2023 Year for our Blog.
We started the blog back in January and I can’t believe this is now the 155th post of the year. For most of the year, the blog was free, but we sent to a subscription model starting in October and we have been very pleasantly surprised by our readers who have elected to participate.
Our plans for 2024 is to add even more content, but let’s do a quick review of the key trends for 2023 that were addressed in our blog:
For us, the number one trend was the mess surrounding 2020/2021 ERP Phase 2 and PARP. USDA wanted us to believe it was easy to calculate, but it was not. We already know of appeals based upon the poorly written forms and instructions for PARP and ERP.
As part of that mess, USDA continues to have believe that you can’t be a farmer if you have too much income from trading in farm equipment. We have seen way too many farmers that their only source of income was from farming be denied the status of a farmer under FSA antiquated rules. We hope in 2024 they get this fixed, but we are not holding our breath on this.
The trend of USDA becoming the champion of “hobby” farmers to the detriment of “true” Ag production. With the release of 2022 ERP, it became apparent that USDA really wants to become a “progressive” proponent of the Biden administration. Instead of reimbursing “real” farmers who incurred large losses in 2022, USDA would rather reimburse “hobby” farmers at a higher rate. Plus, on top of it, let’s not reimburse any crop insurance premiums for those farmers who happen to be white males. Everyone else gets reimbursed, but they don’t. Will this trend continue in 2024. We hope not.
The reduction in Bonus Depreciation from 100% to 80% and then 60% in 2024. We continue to hear from larger farmers who normally trade farm equipment each year that they will stop the trade for a couple of years since they can’t fully depreciate the new equipment. Will this affect the farm equipment manufacturers.
The rise in interest rates. We thought this would lead to a reduction in farmland values. It appears that is has only stopped the rise in land values, but will higher rates lead to any contraction in farmland values in 2024.
We are sure that there are other items of interest in 2023, but these were the items that caught our eye during the year and that we posted on the most.
We look forward to what 2024 will bring and will give our readers some of our thoughts on key 2024 trends next week.
Have a Happy New Year and don’t celebrate too hard Sunday night. I will be in Hawaii with my kids, and I am actually playing in the PGA pro-am next Wednesday with my son and I hope I don’t embarrass myself too much. As long as I don’t dribble a drive off of the first tee it will be a great day.