Insightful Farming Blogs

“What is a Schedule F Form?”

By Reba Liddy

This blog post provides essential information about Schedule F (Form 1040), a key tax form for farmers to report income and expenses. It covers everything from what counts as farming income, common deductions for farmers, to a breakdown of each line on the form. The post also offers tips on navigating tax season, avoiding common mistakes, and explains how Good Agriculture can assist with bookkeeping and tax form preparation. If you’re looking to make tax season easier, this guide is for you!

“USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grants: Cheat Sheet for Farmers”

By Reba Liddy

The USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grant (VAPG) is an excellent opportunity for farmers and ranchers looking to increase their profits by adding value to their raw products. From turning fruit into jams to starting agritourism ventures, this grant offers up to $250,000 with a 1:1 match requirement. However, it’s a highly competitive application process, and preparation is key. In our latest blog post, we walk you through the VAPG, its eligibility requirements, and how to get started—including how we can help with business and marketing plans. Don’t miss out—applications are due by April 17.

“Why Every Farmer Needs a Bookkeeper Who Actually Gets Farming”

By Reba Liddy

Farming is a business, and managing its finances comes with unique challenges. From seasonal income and fluctuating market prices to navigating tax laws and deductions, having a bookkeeper who understands agriculture is crucial. In this blog post, we explain why specialized financial support matters for farmers and how Good Agriculture can help simplify your finances. Learn more about how we can help you save time and money.

“Preparing for Tax Season Webinar Recording”

By Good Agriculture

Missed our “Preparing for Tax Season” webinar? No problem! Catch up with this session where Darrell K. Tennie, CEO of The Tennie Group, and Allen Osorio, Good Agriculture’s Financial Lead, share key strategies for farmers to save money and stay compliant. Learn about choosing the right business entity, maximizing deductions, understanding depreciation, and more! Plus, take advantage of a special offer for 40% off two months of our financial services to help get your business in order before tax season.

“From Field Notes to Farm Data: Speaking Your Way to Better Records”

By Kirsten Simmons

In this blog, we explore how using voice-to-text technology can simplify farm data collection. Learn how speaking your farm notes instead of writing them can save time and improve accuracy. Discover how this method can help farmers better manage their records and streamline operations for improved productivity and decision-making.

“Federal Funding Freeze – What Does This Mean for Farmers?”

By Good Agriculture

We’re as confused as you are, but this is what we know so far about the federal funding freeze. Because all of of this uncertainty, we want to help farmers and ranchers by giving you 30 days free of weekly funding email alerts.

“Prepare for Tax Season with Us and a Tax Professional”

By Good Agriculture

Get ready for tax season with our Preparing for Tax Season Webinar on February 18 at 6:30 p.m. EST! We’ll share expert tips on organizing your books, minimizing taxes, and filing efficiently. Join us to reduce stress and tackle tax season with confidence!

“Advanced Farm Financial Management Webinar Recording”

By Good Agriculture

Check out our Advanced Farm Financial Management webinar recording! We dig into everything from breaking down profitability to planning your cash flow—practical tips to help you manage your farm’s finances like a pro.

“Farm Bookkeeping Webinar Recording”

By Good Agriculture

Missed the webinar, or want to relive the thrills of all things bookkeeping? Check out our Farm Bookkeeping Basics webinar recording, where we dabble into getting your books in order for tax season.

“A Great New Opportunity for Farmers: FSA Provides Grants for Specialty Crop Growers”

By Josh Davis

Discover the Farm Service Agency’s new Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops (MASC) program! Designed to expand markets for specialty crops, MASC offers payments to growers for entering or growing their market share in 2025. Applications are due January 8, so don’t wait—get started today!

“Farm Accounting Basics Webinar”

By Lily Painter

Our hearts go out to everyone impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Helene. While the webinar was recorded before the storm, we are deeply committed to supporting our farming communities, and we’ve included links to relief efforts in the article to help those who need it most during this challenging time.

“Recovering Together: Supporting Farmers Affected by Hurricane Helene”

By Lily Painter

We know these past few weeks have been incredibly challenging for those affected by Hurricane Helene. To help ease the recovery process, we’ve tagged links to essential resources within this post, offering support and relief options for farmers and communities impacted by the storm.

“Lost in Bureaucracy: Uncovering EQIP Deadlines for Farmers”

By Kirsten Simmons

Before we dive into the EQIP opportunities, we want to take a moment to acknowledge the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene. Our hearts go out to all those affected across the impacted states, and we are so sorry for the challenges you’re facing. We’ve included links to relief efforts to help support your recovery during this difficult time.

“Preparing Your Farm for Tax Season”

By Good Agriculture

For those of you who filed an extension on your taxes, Tax Extension Day (October 15) is right around the corner!

For the rest of you, tax season might seem like a far-off concern, but it’s never too early to start getting your farm’s finances in order. While we’re not CPAs and this isn’t official tax advice, we’re here to share some best practices we’ve seen help farmers navigate this time of year.

“The Numbers Make Cents”

By Good Agriculture

Our Financial Management Service is turning the financial tides for our farmers. If you’re not a numbers person (and let’s face it, who really is?), we’re breaking it down, so that we’re not just ranting and raving about our stats.

So, what’s going on? As part of our anniversary celebration last month, we took a deep dive into the monthly finances of our customers with at least six months of work with us. We wanted to see how our financial wizardry has been working for them.

“Celebrating Two Years of Helping Farmers and Ranchers”

By Good Agriculture

Happy Birthday to Us!
The past two years have been a wild ride… The median farmer who used our financial management service had a 2 percentage point increase in profit margins. Our grants team has won nearly $1 million in funding for our farmers. Every farmer who’s worked with us is still in business and we’re still helping them manage their companies so they can manage their farms.

“From Grass to Green: The Power of Rotational Grazing”

By Good Agriculture

Have you ever wondered how cows could become environmental allies? It’s not just a fantasy; it’s a practical strategy that’s reshaping farms and landscapes. Enter rotational grazing – an open secret that’s been hiding in plain sight, which benefits for ranchers, cattle, and the environment.

“Celebrating Earth Day with 20% Off One-Time Services”

By Good Agriculture

Happy Earth Day from the Good Agriculture team! Every day is Earth Day for farmers and everyone working in agriculture, but it’s a great reminder for everyone else how much work goes into taking care of our planet while feeding the world.

“Coming Soon…”

By Kirsten Simmons

Ever find out about the perfect grant too late to apply? It’s incredibly frustrating, and the most annoying part is that it’s not like there’s anything you could have done differently – there’s simply too much going on for you to stay on top of something that isn’t ranked in the top 50 most urgent items.

“Good Agriculture Announces Partnership with Harvest Returns”

By Good Agriculture

Fort Worth, Texas, Feb. 27, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Harvest Returns, an online platform for agriculture investing, today announced a partnership with Good Agriculture, a farmer-first, tech-enabled company focused on helping agriculture producers manage the business side of their operations. The partnership entails customer referrals between the two companies for their respective services.

“Mastering Your Farm Finances: A Step-by-Step Guide”

By Good Agriculture

This month, we’re diving into a fun topic that all farmers like to talk about: bookkeeping!

…Wait, don’t everyone head for the exits at once!

We get it. You didn’t go into farming to spend your days in front of a spreadsheet. Kirsten’s farm desk has a pile of receipts from 2022 tucked behind the monitor that she’ll get to… someday. But if you’re not in a position to hire someone to handle the books (or you don’t have a spouse willing to step up to the task) there are a few things you can do at the end of each year to make your life about ten thousand times easier when tax time comes.

“Business or Hobby? How to Set Your Farm Up For Success – Part One”

By Kirsten Simmons

I’ve got some bad news for you. Growing the food is the easy part. There’s a whole world of logistics, planning and frustration that comes between growing great food and making a living doing growing great food.

This is the start of a series of posts about the logistics of running a business. We’ll keep these short and sweet, and end each with resources for tackling these topics on your own or folks you can trust to help you.

“Crushing the Off Season”

By Kirsten Simmons

Here in the northern hemisphere we’re going into the persephone days – colder, less than 12 hours of daylight – for most farmers, it’s the off season.

Depending on what the year was like, you may be dragging yourself to your last delivery, stumbling across the finish line with a sense of relief. You figure you’ll rest for a few weeks, ease into next year and do it all over again. That said, there a few things you can do during these few weeks that will reduce the chances that you’re struggling to reach the finish line when 2024 comes to a close. Take a week to breathe, then start easing into next year with a plan to crush the off season – and the year to come.

“It’s EQIP Season!”

By Kirsten Simmons

EQIP is one of the best programs out there for small farmers – if you’d like to do something the US government considers a conservation practice, chances are you can get reimbursed for some or even most of the expense.

The catch? Well, it moves at the speed of government. I’m typing this from my farm, where I’m swapping my overhead irrigation every 90 minutes because my EQIP project proposal to increase water pressure and install drip irrigation didn’t get funded this past cycle. I’ll be meeting with my NRCS agent tomorrow to renew the application for this next cycle. And with any luck I’ll get funding, along with a LOT of other farmers, because the Inflation Reduction Act massively increased the funding for conservation practices!

“It’s Alive! Tests to Help Understand the Biology in Your Soil”

By Kirsten Simmons

Do you know what’s under your feet? If you’re reading this outside, the answer is no – because it’s estimated that upwards of 90% of the organisms residing in the soil are unknown to science. Healthy soil is a microscopic Times Square of bustling activity and nutrient cycling.

While we have next to no understanding of the species present in the soil, let alone the cycles they participate in, we have some tests we can run which give us some windows into the world of the soil. Think of them as a peeks through various manhole covers present in streets across the planet – they give you a glimpse, but you can’t climb through the manhole to see the full context.

“What You Need to Do to Be Eligible for NRCS Programs”

By Kirsten Simmons

Did you know that there are roughly $30 billion available for NRCS programs? The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is an agency dedicated to preserving our nation’s natural resources and working lands. If your farm goals align with the practices the agency wants to promote, you have the opportunity to receive technical assistance or funding to support your work.

“The Small Farmer Viability Curve”

By Kirsten Simmons

Small farming can be a meat grinder. Yes, it’s an amazing job – there’s nothing more satisfying than growing the literal sustenance that people in your community depend on.

But it’s brutal. The work wears on your body, the hours wear on your energy and the lack of a safety net wears on your nerves. You have to be the labor, the accountant, the marketer, the tech service and the admin assistant. It’s not sustainable. It’s rare to find a small farmer who’s made it past the five-year mark, let alone one who’s made it a decades-long career. Surviving as a small farmer requires figuring out how to systematize and scale enough to get some of the work off your plate.

“Building a Regenerative Farm – Paying Your People”

By Kirsten Simmons

In a previous post, we talked about having volunteers on the farm. But what about paid workers? How much should they earn? This is a tricky question. Of course, a farm is a business, so if we can reduce our expenses as much as possible, we can increase our profits, and either invest them back into the business, or take them out and use them for our personal endeavors. In this sense, we should pay our workers as little as possible to keep costs low.

“Volunteers and ‘Free Labor'”

By Kirsten Simmons

Volunteers on your farm could either be the best thing that happens to you, or the worst. Like most things in life, the difference between the two is– “it depends.” There are a lot of factors that determine the outcome of the experience, but before we get into all of them, let’s discuss some of the pitfalls and get a few of the common misconceptions out of the way.

First off, if your farm sells in any market other than direct to consumer, volunteers are a potential food safety risk. And unless you’re set up as a non-profit, volunteers can be a significant legal liability if someone gets hurt and decides to sue. And once your farm has reached a certain scale, bringing in someone who doesn’t know your systems isn’t worth the hassle – you’ll spend more time training them than they’ll spend helping.

“Value-Added Producer Grants”

By Kirsten Simmons

What they are, who’s eligible and how to apply

So, you want to apply for a Value-Add Producer Grant?

I haven’t met a small farmer who isn’t interested in the Value-Add Producer Grant (VAPG). Who wouldn’t? Free money from the government to turn your raw products into something people will pay more money for? Sign me up!

It’s not quite so simple, unfortunately. In this post we’ll dive into what you need to know about applying for this grant.

“The Farmer’s Sense”

By Kirsten Simmons

It doesn’t get talked about often enough, but I honestly think that farmers have a superpower. They say a professional golfer can tell from just the backstroke of any golfer whether a ball is going to travel correctly or not. And I think farmers have a sixth sense kinda like that. I call it “The Farmer’s Sense.”

Let’s say for example that you are a rancher, and you are looking over your herd of cattle on a typical workday. You notice one cow that stands out. You can’t put your finger on it exactly, but she doesn’t look quite right today. It could be her posture is a bit slumped, or maybe her gait is bit off, or her coat isn’t quite as glossy as the rest. I’m putting these descriptions into words right now, but the farmer’s sense is even more subtle than this. It’s more like a vague feeling. Almost impossible to describe.

Tips from the Farm’s Back Office

Phone

Email

Address

Connect with us