Debt is a four-letter word, but it doesn’t need to be that kind of four-letter word – not if you manage things properly.

Is the market price for hay lower than your cost of production? Do you know your cost of production? I suspect many of us have not calculated it for a while. I recently went through the process of updating a budget for irrigated alfalfa hay in southern Idaho.

Like many areas, pasture productivity in Virginia is inconsistent. More often than not, we have a glut of grass in spring which is hayed from pasture only to be fed out later in the year – as early as September in dry years.

Nick Baker, agriculture agent (soil and crop science emphasis) at the University of Wisconsin Extension in Rock County, shared thoughts earlier this year on meadow fescue.

How many of you in the farming and ranching world consider yourself to be an “ecologist?” Loosely, Webster defines an ecologist as someone who seeks to better understand “the relationships between a group of living things and their environment.” So what does that mean for all of us in agriculture?

Congress has given farmers a variety of tools to manage income tax. In profitable years, managing sales and inventory combined with liberal use of income averaging, deferred payment contracts,

Many people believe combining cows and pasture streams automatically means trouble. Certainly, if present in small, narrow pastures at high stocking rates for excessive periods of time, cows will contribute to the pollution of streams.

How was the quality of the alfalfa you harvested this year? Weather often has a large impact. However, harvest management can have a huge effect on drying rate and quality of harvested forage. Now is the time to evaluate how this year went and to plan for what changes might be implemented next year.