Dog Gone Laws

Author name: PDillonAdmin24

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Boss me around will you: Ag Employee concepts that the DOL isn’t going to have on their website

Being a better boss primarily requires us to communicate with our employees effectively. Recognizing that the leader and the led are only two portions of the puzzle, the message and the goal must also be considered when developing an effective communication relationship with employees. If you don’t communicate the goal, the led will substitute their own goal and when the goals don’t match, conflict results.

For example, during the spring, just prior to planting, your employee reports to work a 6 AM as normal, expecting to be gone by 2 PM, as per normal arrangement. The employee tells her husband to plan her to be home to prepare their own equipment for spring planting. However, you have decided to move equipment to your equipment to the field in hopes of calibrating all the electronics so that you can start when the crop insurance planting window opens up. Your goal is to make sure that on the first available day you are running hard, and you view this prep day as critical to get it all done, regardless of time spent. As mid afternoon approaches, two very different sets of expectations are brewing, which could have been avoided by cluing the employee in at the start of the day or beginning of the week on the things you, the employer, wanted accomplished.

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500 acres of cotton or water for school kids?

The water wars in the weststarted heating up in 2014. The news and “drought shamming” celebrities are late to the party. In Texas in 2014,  farmers, including a 500 acre cotton farmer, were told they did not have access to  the River Brazos for their crop, but did not restrict the use of cities along the river a well, saying public safety trumps water law principles. The same  year in California, a 1200 acre vegetable operation is only going to plant 400 acres because of water reduction.  In Southern Texas, rice farmers have not had water for 4 years, while Austin continues to consume more and more water. In Nevada, the reservoirs are so low, residents talk about “bath tub rings” around the holding lakes, the record low level expose shore and side wall that haven’t seen the sun in a long time.
Nevada and Utah are at odds over shipping water across borders, Kansas is not upset at Colorado Nebraska about leaving the Big 12, but rather about diverting water from the Republican  River that is apportioned to Kansas. Texas and New Mexico are in front of the Supreme Court about water usage.

That vegetable farm that is 2/3ds idle won’ t have excess produce to donate to local food shelters as it has in past, nor will it employ as many people. Low lakes means low boating numbers, which cuts into tourism dollars. The laws in the Western States are set up to cause conflict. For example, in some states you can pump as much as you want from under your ground , but if your neighbor pumps it out first, you have no recourse absent a court order. When your neighbor is a new sub development with a passion for orderly neat patches of lush Kentucky blue grass, washed cars and golf courses in a desert , it doesn’t  take a fortune teller to see what is coming.

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“IS THAT EXPENSE AN REPAIR”

The IRS has cooked up a special mix of fun to generate more revenue. First, they have reduced accelerated depreciation limits to $25,000 and Second, have tightened their position on what is a repair (which is a current year expense and what is a capital improvement which has to be deducted over time). It is enough to drive you to drink, which is why it is referred to as the BAR test. (Betterment, adaption and restoration). If the fix does any of those things, it needs to be depreciated out slowly instead in the year incurred. Betterment = fixes a condition or defect that existed before the purchase of the property, is  a material addition to the property; or increases the property’s productivity, efficiency, strength, etc. Adaption =a change a new or different use if   of property to a use from what you bought the property for Restoration. =  puts the property back in working order from non function or rebuilds the property to a like new condition or replaces a major component or structure of the property.

Oil Changes, filter changes and the like which happen more than once during the life span of the item are still allowed as current year expenses.
Don’t be surprised if your tax preparer asks more questions this year about your repair category. It would appear that with the recent passage of a higher accelerated expense provision, this issue may not be as critical, as a tax payer maybe able to elect to treat what would be BAR repairs as accelerated expenses.

Who wins with crop insurance?

The company’s selling the policies sure do. According to a recent white paper: ‘As a result of the significant subsidies crop insurance corporations receive, they consistently generate profits that are considered far above the reasonable rate of return as calculated by economic experts. Between 1989 and 2009, crop insurance companies averaged a 17% return on equity at a time when the ‘reasonable’ rate was under 13%, according to an analysis done for the USDA. In 2009 alone, crop insurers enjoyed an astounding 26% rate of return, more than double what was considered reasonable by the industry standard for that year.'”

Questions to Ask About Your Data Privacy Policy

Mapping via infrared spectrum at the one inch level on a field is technology that is already here. The foreign ag service has been using satellite images to predict competing countries yields for decades. That technology is getting cheaper and easier to acquire for private use. Tractors and combines are routinely in communication with GPS locators and mapping programs as farms become more technically advanced. The data that is captured can be used for many purposes.

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Pop Quiz-2015

Pop Quiz… Name the only segment of the economy with a division of government devoted to it.  The answer is agriculture. From the regulation of food preparation to the use of food aid as a foreign policy tool, agricultural and the laws surrounding it impacts all of us whether we like to admit it or not.

The term agricultural law may not as common as personal injury law  or divorce law , but make no mistake, agriculture and the law are forever intertwined. It naturally follows that where government is, so will be the lawyers advocating for their client. Much like a farmer, an agricultural lawyer in rural Iowa has to know a little bit about of lot of things related to agricultural law and be willing to know when it is time to get a dedicated specialist. This column will touch on the various segments of agricultural law trends and identify the potential impact on members of the northeast Iowa farm community.

Estate planning, business planning, government farm policy and taxation readily come to mind as legal issues facing the farm community. However, food safety regulations, interpretation of federal pesticide laws, land use regulation decisions and foreign food aid policy have an impact on our local community, often time without knowledge until far after the decisions have been made. For example, one decision by the Supreme Court  applied the government’s right of eminent domain to allow a city to take a private citizen’s land and after paying for it, turn the seized property over to another private citizen who put it to use for profit.  In the struggle between expanding urban population centers and agricultural land owners, this precedent could be used to the detriment of land owners.  

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Every body’s doing it… Doesn’t make it right

It is good to see the government in action and stopping excesses, a fresh prospective if you will, following the ugly election cycle we are just exiting. These are summaries of ethical and legal issues that member of the Ag community who work for the Federal government have been caught in recent years from the Pentagon’s Encyclopedia of Ethical Failures.  Yes, that is a real document handled by the Department of Defense’s Standards and Conduct Office.

Agriculture Employee Sought for Approving Fraudulent Loans

A former employee of the Department of Agriculture is wanted for recruiting his friends to fraudulently apply for farm loans and then giving him money in exchange for approving the loans.  The former employee helped his non-farmer co-conspirators to fill out the required forms with the information required for approval.  Under this scheme, the former employee approved loans totaling $1.8 million.  He collected $340,000 for himself. The former employee has been charged with 98 counts including 56 for bribery. Federal sentencing patterns suggest that he is facing a long time in the federal criminal system. The loan applicants also likely face a dim, non farming future.

Seven Agriculture Inspectors Sentenced for Bribery Scheme

Seven U.S. Department of Agriculture fruit and vegetable inspectors were convicted of operating a scheme in which they received cash payments from fruit and vegetable wholesalers in return for the inspectors assigning lower grades to their produce.  The lower grade meant that the wholesaler could pay the grower a lower price for the produce and then re-sell it at the higher grade.
All pled guilty to one count of bribery each.  Bribery occurs when a public official seeks or accepts anything of value (such as cash) in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act (such as assigning produce grades).

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Iowa on Stage for more than the Big Dance Last month

Iowa on the National Stage for more than the Big Dance.

If it was a $50 fine to murder someone, we wouldn’t have a population problem anywhere. This phrase sums up why people follow the law. Either they fear the punishment (life in prison appears to be a higher deterrent) or they think the law is a good idea to begin with(most folks just wouldn’t). If the cost of non compliance is low, even a toddler knows that paying the piper is worth the fun or risk of non compliance. When no one really knows who is supposed to comply, then the rule enforcers are left with no clear line to enforce and anybody who doesn’t really want to expend effort to do anything doesn’t have to.

This principle is playing out in a case of national importance filed right here in Iowa. Currently, Iowa has a voluntary nutrient reduction system designed to combat the ever growing nitrate level in our drinking water. However, the laws on the books are unclear on who is on the hook for making sure the water stays clean. The Des Moines Board of Water Works Trustees (DMWW) has about 500,000 customers that it owes a duty to provide clean water to. It is spending a lot of money attempting to do so. Not satisfied with the lack of progress on the matter, they filed a federal Clean Water Act (CWA) lawsuit against the supervisors and drainage districts of three counties. The lawsuit alleges that the county supervisors, as trustees for the drainage districts, are operating the drainage districts in an “unlawful and antisocial” manner that is contrary to the “public health and welfare.” The DMWW seeks a court order to cease “all discharges of nitrate that are not authorized by an NPDES or state operating permit.” They specifically targeted counties that had data to support their concerns about nitrate infiltration.

What DMWW really wants is change and since they aren’t getting their way through cooperation, they are seeking it through judges rulings. Its goal is to force national and state agencies change regulations and positions they have had for years. If successful, this case could impact the entire nation industry of agriculture. Farmers will feel the impact if they have to apply for discharge permits. It could ad some depth to the current voluntary nutrient reduction strategy. If state and local governments are mandated to take actions, perhaps funding will be available to farmers to implement buffer strips and other reduction stratagems that they will be compelled to complete if DMWW gets their way. Of course, those funds have to come from somewhere, schools, roads, bridges or tax payers wallets are all candidates I would suppose.

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