USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) announces the availability of a newly created website titled: Rural Tax Education (ruraltax.org) providing farmers and ranchers a resource for agricultural related income and self-employment tax information that is both up-to-date and easy to understand. “Farmers and ranchers wanting up-to-date tax information will want to put the Rural Tax Education website in their list of browser favorites,” said Dave Paul, director of RMA’s Spokane Regional Office serving Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington states.

Wieser Concrete Products, Inc. of Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, announces the addition of another precast production facility. Located 35 miles northeast of St. Louis, Missouri, at 4419 Wagon Wheel Road, Roxana, Illinois, the Wieser Concrete Roxana facility includes 32,000 square feet of production space on 31 acres, and will produce the entire line of Wieser Concrete’s quality precast products.

Bovance announced the second year of its youth scholarship program, which was won by Brent Sexton from Iowa in 2011. This $1,000 scholarship is open to high school seniors and college students in their first or second year of undergraduate study in an agriculture related field.

Foremost Farms USA will offer up to 10 scholarships worth $2,000 each to member-owners and the children of member-owners in 2012. The Agricultural Education Scholarships will be awarded to students who are pursuing a career in the agricultural field.

California Dairies Inc. (CDI), the nation’s second largest dairy processing cooperative, and its board of directors has announced the appointment of Andrei Mikhalevsky as president and chief executive officer effective Jan. 1. Mikhalevsky will succeed Richard L. Cotta, who will retire on Dec. 31.

For most of us, April 27 of 2011 was just another day of a bucolic spring. Pasture was turning green for stockers, cows were delivering the last calves of the spring crop, the CME Feeder Cattle Index was dropping below $135, and we were carping about either the price of gasoline or the price of corn. But for residents of Alabama, April 27 was filled with sirens, dozens of dark funnel clouds and, when the day was over, 247 fatalities and 23,553 homes lost.

Enforcement action by the Internal Revenue Service has actually increased in recent months in the farming and livestock field.

Estate tax planning has never been an art of certainty, but the last two years have brought about a new era of uncertainty.

Seeing a family business successfully transfer from one generation to the next is a goal of many that is, unfortunately, achieved by only a few.

Beef consumption in Argentina registered in 2011 its lowest per capita total in 53 years, having dropped approximately 50 percent from 216 pounds in 1958 to 106 pounds last June, according to the Institute for the Promotion of Beef. “One of the motives was the 2009 drought and the other that cattle breeding profits have plummeted. Farmers turned over to soybean, which is far more rewarding,” said Gonzalo Alvarez Maldonado, IPCV president.