To start your farm succession plan, you’ve formed a limited liability company (LLC), signed your estate plan and maybe even transferred some interest in the LLC to your successors. Hopefully, you have reviewed and updated your plan and taken periodic actions to move your farm transfer forward.

Ninety-nine percent of farm insurance policies sold today have fundamental coverage flaws when it comes to dealing with environmental liability. Those gaps in your general farm liability insurance coverage may be leaving your dairy open to substantial financial risk.

If you watched the men’s or women’s NCAA basketball tournaments, you witnessed extreme strategy at work. Coaches game-planned to attack opposing defenses and put points on the board while shutting down the other team.

What do the words “tax return” bring to mind? For many people, fear, dread, disgust and overall dislike are the first thoughts. Accompany these feelings with the average person’s innate inclination of procrastination, and filing taxes is a recipe for a “tax nightmare.” Let me give you an example.

Too often, farm kids return home to the farm because they’ve been told there is always a place for them. However, this can create a sense of entitlement. They feel they are entitled to a spot on the farm instead of feeling humbled by the experience and driven to earn their keep.

When identifying milk quality issues, a standard plate count (SPC) test isn’t enough. Elevated SPC could indicate dirty equipment, poor cooling, contaminants from the environment or a variety of other issues.

As I was standing in the headlocks of the hospital barn, holding an IV bottle in my hand while it was draining, I remember staring at the treatment cart with four more IVs to give.

The definition of “high milk quality” and standards for acceptable udder heath are continuously becoming more rigorous, and dairy producers who wish to remain competitive must meet or exceed these evolving standards.

Obtaining and retaining employees is a forefront issue among many industries, especially for dairies. A current trend plaguing our industry is job-hopping. Many farms seem to endure constant turnover, and replacing and training new hires is costly. Although there is no cure-all for reducing turnover, there are some steps employers and managers can take to keep employees on the farm.

The 2014 farm bill significantly changed dairy policy for American dairy producers. Gone were milk price support programs such as the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) and the programs tied to parity prices. The current policy is the Margin Protection Program (MPP), which seeks to provide insurance-like coverage for a dairy farm’s margin based on the difference between milk and feed prices.