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Finances

Understanding the Downward Bias in USDA’s Farm Income Forecasts

USDA’s farm income forecasts are downward bias due to high costs of over-prediction.

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Operating Profit Margin Benchmarks

This article examines trends in the operating profit margin for a sample of farms over a ten-year period and develops financial performance benchmarks. Specifically, using KFMA whole-farm data for farms with continuous data from 2010 to 2019, the operating profit margin ratio is computed for each farm and year. Also, the operating profit margin ratio and corresponding farm characteristics are compared across financial performance quartiles.

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Benchmarking Repayment Capacity Measures

This article is one of a series of financial management articles that examine financial statements and financial analysis.  In this article, repayment capacity measures are illustrated for a case farm and discussed.

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Benchmarking Profitability and Financial Efficiency

This article is one of a series of articles that examine financial statements and financial analysis.  In this article, a case farm in west central Indiana is used to illustrate financial performance benchmarks for profitability and financial efficiency ratios.

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Benchmarking Labor Efficiency and Productivity

It takes a lot of family and hired labor to run modern farms.  Labor is an important and costly input and farm managers need to ask if they are getting the efficiency and productivity needed from that labor to be competitive.  One way to evaluate this question is to use benchmarks created using data from similar farms.  Labor benchmarks should include family and operator labor as well as hired labor. 

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Understanding USDA Farm Income Forecasts

USDA forecasts farm income in February and then releases four additional updates throughout the year as more data becomes available. In this episode of the Purdue Commercial AgCast, Purdue agricultural economists Todd Kuethe and Brady Brewer discuss the USDA Farm Income Forecast, which was updated on September 2, and the accuracy and bias of these forecasts along with how to interpret the adjustments.

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Measuring Repayment Capacity and Farm Growth Potential

For a farm to grow, it is essential that the replacement margin be large enough to repay term debt, replace assets, and purchase new assets, and that the replacement coverage ratio be greater than one.  This article defines and illustrates the use of key repayment capacity measures.

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Du Pont Financial Analysis

The Du Pont financial analysis model is a useful method of illustrating the relationship between the asset turnover ratio, the operating profit margin ratio, return on assets, and return on equity. In this article, a case farm is used to examine the relationships between profitability and financial efficiency ratios, and to examine the impact of a change in revenue, variable costs, or owning rather than leasing 150 acres on financial performance.

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Measuring Efficiency of Farm Asset Utilization

A farm’s ability to operate on the production frontier depends on its ability to produce crop and livestock enterprises efficiently, while a farm’s ability to produce on the cost frontier pertains to its ability to produce on the production frontier, manage costs, and market crop and livestock commodities.  The asset turnover ratio, on the other hand, measures how efficiently farm assets are being used to generate value of farm production (a gross income measure).

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Measuring Farm Profitability

The rates of return on assets and equity are extremely useful when comparing farm investments with other investments.  However, these two measures are sensitive to how farm assets are valued on the balance sheet.  For this reason, the operating profit margin is more conducive for benchmarking profitability among farms.

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