LAND EXPO 2

Wow, I don't know when I've been more blessed with so many positive comments yesterday regarding my synopsis of the opening speaker at the Land Investment Expo on Tuesday.  I feel like I'm back in my old journalism persona.  You know I was an investigative reporter at our local daily newspaper for 2.5 years before returning to the farm in 1982.  The adrenaline is pumping; you can't imagine how I loved the newsroom, the sound of the press rolling, and the fellowship among us reporters and editors.  I can still hear, taste, and smell it; in my second life, I want to start a weekly newspaper. 

                  In fact, here's my idea:  somebody needs to start a newspaper called UNCENSORED.  Every week you publish on paper selected things that social media platforms censored.  Who wouldn't pay for that?  Okay, entrepreneurs, there's my million dollar idea; you're welcome.  I'm really a farmer-news junky.  So thank you all for affirming I can still report interesting stuff.  I love you all.

                  Okay, here's the second presentation, from Stephen Vaden, USDA Deputy Secretary. 

                  In the 2022 Agriculture Census, 880 million acres are classified as farmland in the U.S.  Of that, 40 percent is leased and 46 million (4 percent) are under foreign ownership. The number one foreign ownership is Canadian, but the main concern is Chinese. The 1978 Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act has been largely shelved since then and the Trump administration will be bringing it front and center with penalties on the way.  Failure to disclose is an automatic fine of 25 percent of land value.  Early processing is already under way.

                  The Big Beautiful Bill permanently locked in estate tax exemptions and allow 100 percent capital expensing, including increasing the limit to $2.5 million per year.  That means you can now expensive your capital expenditures instead of depreciating them.  Tractors, trucks, farm machinery, pond building, farm buildings. 

                  The USDA is housed in two main buildings; one fronts on Independence Ave. and the other, known as the South Building, is behind it.  It has a backlog of $1 billion in maintenance, was built for 7,500 employees and has never seen more than 60 percent occupancy.  "The taxpayers are getting bilked, so we're shrinking our building footprint to full occupancy."  That entire building will be abandoned and repurposed for the private sector.

                  The reason the USDA is moving offices to Raleigh, Kansas City and other areas out in farm country is because the cost of living is so high and the commute is so long getting into D.C. ("we require people to come to the office") the USDA can't hire competent people to live there.  "The only way to preserve expertise is to move employees to places they can enjoy living, buy a home, and raise a family."  And this puts offices out where farmers live. 

                  The monstrous Beltsville, Maryland agriculture research station (where the double-breasted turkey was developed) covers some 1,000 acres with 400 buildings.  Of those, 250 are so decrepit they're in line for demolition (mold, blown sprinklers, peeling paint, trees growing up through them--really!).  Eliminating them will save $2 billion per year.

                  The two most common things we hear from farmers:

                  1.  Input costs

                  2.  Foreign trade competition, especially from Brazil.

                  We're doubling down on pushing biofuels and looking at mandating ethanol nationwide, moving from E10 to E15 (percentage of ethanol in the mix), and this "will really help our corn farmers."   Joel's note:  don't kill the messenger; I'm just reporting. 

                  When you enter a Federal Service Agency (FSA) office and see all those files, they hold paper documents of every farm client in the area.  The USDA has brought in top flight IT folks to digitize everything and link all the agencies so they're interconnected and can process funds in less than a week.  In fact, the $12 billion bailout coming up, primarily for soybean farmers, will be pre-filled out by USDA workers so all farmers have to do is sign from their home computer and watch the money appear in their bank account in 3 days.  The USDA is going to operate like an efficient business for once.

                  And yes, he did have security agents with him.

                  That's the word from the USDA.  Everybody still with me?