What’s ahead in farming and ranching for 2025? George Baird of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers starts by looking back at what happened in 2024.
“You know, when we look at ’24 and think back to what the market gave us over the last three or four years, good prices, some pretty good yields, an opportunity for operators to increase their equipment lines, you know, and focus on efficiency and operational upgrades, which reflected in the pretty strong yields from most parts of the country despite some real weather challenges. So, that’s been a real positive and fairly strong land values, at least in some parts of the world, which help hold up some balance sheets, right, for everybody as we face the challenges in the coming year or so.”
He looks ahead to the challenges in 2025.
“Yeah, what I’m focused on is thinking beyond not only ‘25 but into ‘26 or ‘27. We can’t just assume that things are going to bottom in and bounce back quickly. So, for my clients, we’re really looking at their farm operations, their land holdings, and deciding what’s most efficient, where we’re maybe losing some efficiencies and some returns and kind of making plans around that. They focus on getting back to the basics of marketing, along with a lot of farmers I deal with. You know, a lot of us would admit that the good times kind of got us spoiled on the thinking things would never change, and so we kind of got away from some of the basics of blocking and tackling for a football analogy. But basics and marketing are planning to go beyond ‘25. And we can’t also assume that the government Farm Bill’s going to be there to bail us out. We’ve seen it’s taken, what, over two years now to get where we are now. We just can’t assume that that’s going to be there to set a base for us going forward, so we gotta plan beyond some of those things.”
Baird talks about his advice for farmland owners and operators.
“What I’m stressing is just looking at our crop plan or our farm budget, our whole farm budget, our cash flow, you know, especially the higher interest rates, that becomes a huge deal. You know, where can we pick up some efficiencies? I’ve already talked to a few guys here just in the last week or so that have let go of some properties that were good, but they were twenty, 30-40 miles away from the operation. And so, they were losing that efficiency and losing some yield, and it was dragging over their overall returns. Let’s stress test all those scenarios. We can’t assume $10 beans. I mean, you can’t assume $12 beans, but let’s see what happens if they’re $8 beans and vice versa for all crops. So really, stress test everything, kind of taking a 360 view of your whole farm operation.”
He says now is the time for you to get everything in order. If you need help doing that, go to asfmra.org.