The question during winter months is not “Will you go to an ag trade show or association meeting,” but “How many ag trade shows or meetings will you go to?” Holy moly, there are more trade shows than tines on a wheel rake. It doesn’t take very many shows before trade show vendors feel a little tumbled with “leaf loss” themselves.

It’s the time of year when hay equipment is parked in machinery sheds across most of the country and owners are planning for the upcoming season. For the newer equipment that is still under a manufacturer’s warranty, it’s an excellent time to evaluate mechanical problems.

With the turn of the new year, most dairy and beef producers are feeding last fall’s harvest of high-moisture corn, corn silage and other cereal grains. But let’s think back to when these high-starch forages and grains were planted and harvested to understand if you really captured every bushel of corn in your corn silage or high-moisture corn.

When the topic of understanding and using agricultural financial reports surfaces in any discussion among production agriculture business managers or owners, you can be assured the discussion will be rather lengthy and that what financial reports they prefer depends on the current objective of the manager or owner.

Due to the increased interest in winter forages, BMR sorghums and minimum or no-till of legumes into winter-forage stubble, many farmers are starting to realize they are planting modern crops with antique management and equipment. For most, it has been two to three generations since anyone seriously grew winter grains, and very few have grown sorghum.

Net farm income of most Kansas farms has been very strong since 2002. This includes those farms allocating a significant acreage to forage crops. In this analysis, a forage-based farm is a crop farm where a third of the crop acres are used to produce silage, alfalfa and hay.