Elevating Our Region – November/December

How are weather extremes impacting your clients and businesses?

At CLA, we work with operations tied to production agriculture. There might be a farmer’s almanac in the back pocket of most clients we connect with year-round. Weather has changed in our region, which has impacted planting, growing, harvest, and planning seasons. The greatest impact we have on businesses is helping them understand their numbers and manage businesses by the numbers. This might include talking about tax credits, tax planning, entity structure, succession, CFO strategy, accounting processes, wealth advisory, or other general conversations as a trusted industry-specific advisor.

Do you see any future trends regarding taxes, regulations, and policy, as they relate to weather?

There are definite trends toward promoting climage change initiatives through tax incentives. At CLA, we’ve seen tax credits related and our region invest in wind, solar, ethanol, and biodiesel for example. There is buzz recently in the carbon credit market, which could be helpful for farmers. Row crop agriculture has a large opportunity here because of its size across country. Producers can look to continue to reduce their carbon footprint as they explore cover crops, no till, and more. Changes in application may benefit their operations and teaming with carbon brokers, they might find buyers for this effort.

What do you see the ag industry doing regarding the weather we’ve been facing in our region?

We are lucky to have some of the best farmland in the country, along with progressive operations to run it. Land and equipment are by no means cheap, so increasing yields on acres and matching it with a right-sized equipment stack makes sense. To face challenges such as the weather, a producer will use all the tools in the toolbelt. From our perspective, it is always important to plan ahead, know your numbers, or get help by reaching out to your team of advisors, such as CLA. As each year has its challenges, working on continous improvement is the standard in the industry. The businesses with that mindset are the ones we see coming out ahead.