I am excited for the opportunity to write this article and provide business owners with valuable tax planning ideas. However, I am a CPA and many may question my qualifications for writing an article in Progressive Dairyman. So I wanted to start off with some instant dairy credibility by listing some of my impressive agricultural qualifications.

Dairy producers can assess their risk for a violative antibiotic residue in milk and meat by using a new online tool from Pfizer Animal Health. The short, 10-question self-assessment takes only a few minutes to complete and is now live at www.AvoidResidues.com/Assessment.

Earlier this year, after almost 10 years of searching, the U.S. military finally got Osama bin Laden. Through a combination of observing, strategizing, communicating, planning, training, waiting and executing, U.S. Navy Seals “Team Six” brought the world’s most sought-after terrorist to justice ... a great day for the United States military and the safety of the entire world. However, as most people would agree, al-Qaida’s presence around the world doesn’t end with the demise of its top leader. And although we can appreciate that bin Laden is now gone, unfortunately, his death won’t diminish the terror organization’s desire to continue recruiting and building its terrorist network.

Many of my clients have heard me say how fascinated I am with families who can work and operate a business together. It’s hard enough to just be family, let alone with the added stress of working side by side for another 40 to 80 hours each week. Families who operate businesses also often have a particular challenge in planning for managerial succession. How and when do parents, aunts, uncles and other senior-generation members stop being directors and become coaches to children and other junior-generation members?

All over the business world the prevailing opinion is that market volatility is here to stay. As a result, the world’s leading businesses are taking action to manage risk. In fact, a 2011 study by the consulting firm Accenture says risk management has moved up the ladder of importance significantly since the same study was performed in 2009, and companies are putting people and systems in place to manage risk. Will this trend extend to America’s dairy farm businesses?

The objective of this article is to examine the factors a producer will want to consider when choosing the milk cooling and storage system for the dairy farm. The two systems considered are the traditional, on-farm, bulk tank system and the direct tanker loading (DTL) system that uses glycol chilling plates and loads directly onto the trailer. In the last 50 years, milk has been stored on most dairy farms in a refrigerated bulk tank. From there it was then pumped onto a tanker truck by the milk hauler and taken to the processor. In recent years, larger operations have begun to use direct tanker loading (DTL). With DTL, milk is cooled rapidly and loaded immediately onto a tanker trailer.

Are you thinking about building a new barn or milking center? It may seem like a simple business decision, but those of you who have built a new building or completed a major remodeling project know the process involves making thousands of decisions. Unfortunately, some farm owners assume that people constructing the building or installing the equipment, plumbing, wiring and other parts of the project know what to do and what is wanted. Sometimes the people hired do an excellent job and the owner is extremely happy with their work. However, sometimes the people hired don’t do the job that is wanted and the owner is an unhappy customer with a building that does not work well.

The University of Minnesota Extension has a quiz on its website. Designed by Dr. Marcia Endres, University of Minnesota dairy management specialist, the quiz titled, How comfortable are your cows?, helps milk producers think about management practices on the dairy farm to improve cow comfort and automatically gives you a score to measure how you are doing.

Many farm managers in Pennsylvania use QuickBooks financial recordkeeping software for their farm business recordkeeping. Of these, several report in conversations with Extension educators that they do not feel that they get the most out of the program, in terms of financial reports and decision making tools. In order to assist farm managers make the most of QuickBooks software as a financial decision making tool, Penn State Extension has planned a two-part workshop series that will be held in several locations throughout Pennsylvania.