Bill Watson knows the farm financial outlook can change quickly. Watson, the president of UMB Bank’s agribusiness division, said Jan. 31 that interest rates are now less likely to see increases after an announcement from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

“That picture changed a lot yesterday when Chairman Powell wrapped up the Fed meeting saying the outlook on interest rates has changed,” Watson said. “The case for rate rises has ‘weakened somewhat.’”

As tariffs were traded between the U.S. and China in 2018, American farmers whose crops were affected received some needed help in the form of aid payments.

Those Market Facilitation Program payments — delivered in two parts with the second round still to come — helped negate some of the losses farmers were looking at and led to some increased profitability for 2018.

Things haven’t fallen to the level of the ag crisis of the 1980s. Not yet, anyway.

There are signs of trouble in farm country, but lenders and others who work in farm financials are not seeing signs of an upheaval of the likes that marked the worst ag economic crisis of the modern era.

DES MOINES — With tax reform measures now in place, farmers are still learning what that means for their operations. One thing they know is that estate taxes and 1031 exchanges remain largely unchanged.

Very little has changed in regards to 1031 property exchanges, according to Becky Petersen, an attorney with IP&1031, a West Des Moines business that specializes in facilitating the exchanges.

DES MOINES — There are lessons to be learned in today’s economic numbers regarding agriculture: that land values remain relatively strong, farmers appear optimistic, and good management and marketing are becoming more important.

Those are some of the messages Jim Knuth talked about during the Jan. 25 Land Investment Expo in Des Moines. Knuth, senior vice president at Farm Credit Services of America, told attendees at the conference that one of the surprises of the last several years is land prices have not dropped as far as expected.

When Steven Brockshus was a student watching a farmland auction with his dad, he realized that farmers were making one of the most important purchases of their lives often based on very little reliable information.

He saw a problem that he wanted to solve.