Content by Matthew Diersen
Beef: Best Management Practices for Cow-Calf Production
This comprehensive book provides producers with insight and education into the latest beef management, handling practices and technology.
Monthly Cattle Prices and Basis Levels
Effective marketing and risk management techniques often rely on sound benchmarks. Those marketing cattle need reasonable metrics to evaluate received and expected prices.
Census of Agriculture Cattle Insights
The "2017 Census of Agriculture" is a valuable source for insights related to cattle operations at the state level. There were 13,928 operations across South Dakota with cattle in 2017, and the total inventory was 3,988,183 head.
Risk Calculator
The Risk Calculator is designed to combine crop insurance, government programs, and marketing tools together for a crop.
Farm Size and Efficiency
Growth is a common denominator of various business objectives. A business may want to grow profits, sales, market share, etc. The growth of a business itself usually refers to growth in equity, or growth in assets after debts have been paid. Farms, from a business perspective, are no exception. Farmers seeking to grow equity need to be willing and able to retain earnings and cannot be overleveraged.
Farm Structure Trends
Farm decisions are often undertaken with a very long outlook. The purchase of land or a change in a cropping system are not choices done with short-run gains in mind. As a result, structural changes in agriculture are often slow to occur and to observe.