Talk to any high school-aged male while standing beside your diesel pickup, and sooner or later the question will arise, “Is that thing chipped?” Diesel performance chips are electronic devices that intercept and modify engine management signals to increase the power output of the engine.

One of my best friends shared with me that his wife cannot understand his need to explore junkyards. His idea of a nice afternoon, and mine too, is having a couple of hours to explore a new junkyard. His own, he calls his “boneyard.”

I was enjoying a dandy start to the new year. January was like a heavenly dream. We’d had some snow and a couple of cold stretches in late December, but the first few weeks of the year felt more like April than January.

Alfalfa is the third most valuable field crop produced in the U.S., valued at over $9.3 billion, $1.2 billion more than wheat, according to 2017 figures recently released by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). “Alfalfa needs to take its rightful position alongside corn, soybean, wheat, cotton and rice, which are often referred to as the “big five,” said Beth Nelson, president of the National Alfalfa & Forage Alliance (NAFA).

Late winter and early spring are the primary times when brown root rot, also known as snow mold, may be damaging northern New York alfalfa, a highly valued forage crop for dairy cows and other livestock.

And just when ag equipment sales had begun to turn around … President Trump tweeted in early March that “trade wars are good and easy to win. But every war has casualties,” regarding a proposed 25 percent tariff on imported steel and 10 percent tax on imported aluminum. 

In terms of total annual value to U.S. crop producers, hay remains third (behind corn and soybeans) despite three years of lower prices and declining dry hay acreage. What will 2018 bring?

Tax codes on equipment trades just got trickier. Under old tax law, a farmer could trade in farm equipment and recognize no gain or loss on the trade. For example, assume a farmer has an old combine worth $200,000 and trades it in for a new combine worth $500,000. The $200,000 trade value is essentially ignored and the tax cost basis of the new combine is simply $300,000 (the net cash paid).