27 May 10 What’s a fair cash rent?

Producers and landlords often wonder about cropland lease rates. Unlike land prices that are accessible to the public, there’s no way to actually determine what’s happening with lease rates. Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development sheds some light on this issue by commissioning an annual survey on the topic. The rents reported in the survey vary widely even within the same county, but they do provide a bit of a guideline as to what’s happening in the marketplace. To my knowledge, no similar survey information is available in Saskatchewan. Ted Nibourg, a farm business management specialist with Alberta Agriculture has an interesting rule of thumb formula for determining a rental rate tied to land productivity. Nibourg says take one-quarter of the long term average yield of a given crop and multiply this by an anticipated price. Discount this result by a further 25 per cent to cover risk and uncertainty. He uses the example of land that would typically produce an 80 bushel per acre barley crop. One quarter of this yield is 20 bushels. Using a $3 a bushel price is $60 an acre. Discounting that by 25 per cent gives a cash rental rate of $45 an acre. A 30 bushel per acre canola yield at $8 a bushel gives the same result. I’m Kevin Hursh.

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Tags: agricultural products, agricultural services, Alberta Agriculture, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, crop protection, cropland lease rates, custom application, Dynagra, fertilizers, financial solutions, precision agronomics, soil fertility, Variable Rate Technology

02 Mar 10 Nitrogen prices rise while Roundup drops

Producers are always interested in farm input costs, but it’s tough to get broad-based information. One good source is the website for Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. They’ve long been monitoring a wide variety of farm input costs – everything from the price of tractors to the price of barbed wire. The input prices are collected by Wild Rose Agricultural Producers and put together by the Statistics and Data Development Unit of Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. The stats for January were recently released. They show a gradual rise in prices for urea fertilizer since last November. Phosphate prices, on the other hand were quite flat through January. Roundup Weathermax herbicide fell sharply between December and January. Certified barley and wheat seed have been falling in price. However, herbicide tolerant canola seed has been rising sharply in price. There are charts and graphs that go back for a number of years. Just check out the Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development website. I’m Kevin Hursh.

Tags: Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, Roundup Weathermax, Statistics and Data Development Unit of Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, Wild Rose Agricultural Producers