American Farm Bureau Federation has launched a web site to assist farmers and ranchers make production decisions based on prevailing economic factors. The goal is to help producers increase their income and reduce expenses for a positive bottom line.
“As a service to Farm Bureau members, AFBF has always monitored conditions in the agricultural economy and tried to anticipate challenges that Farm Bureau members may face,” said AFBF President Bob Stallman. “In this new information age, AFBF is capable of more easily sharing information and quickly directing members to important information via the Internet.”
The address for the “Farm Bureau Production Decision Aid” (FB-PDA) Web site is http://fbpda.fb.org/. The AFBF economic analysis team has assembled information and data related to crop and livestock production expenses as well as whole-farm planning. Updates to the information will be regularly posted during the year.
“Via the Production Decision Aid site, producers can link to the best farm management information available including recent government and university reports and marketing specialist analysis,” said Bob Young, AFBF chief economist.
“As the site notes, marketing will be a key to producer income. The lowest crop prices during 26 of the last 30 years occurred at harvest time,” Young said.
The Web site lists production information for cattle, cotton, dairy, feed grains, fruits/vegetables, hogs, peanuts, rice, soybeans and wheat. Resources or links that relate to each commodity appear on the front page of a section, and then by clicking onto a specific region of the country, the resources specific to that commodity and region are provided.