Ag economists are urging producers to sharpen their pencils as they prepare for the 2026 planting season. On a recent webinar, Glennis McClure, Ag Economics Educator with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension, offered some tips for financial resilience, including the importance of an up-to-date budget.
“If you’re working with enterprise budgets, you’re starting with some real clarity on what your cost production is. If you have that clarity, you can make some decisions based on that. So if we have run up in the market, and you know that you’re covering your costs, that can help you make some decisions. Hey, you know, if my costs are covered, I’m going to make some marketing decisions based off of that.”
McClure also suggests keeping an eye on your working capital.
“Watch our current ratio so that we do have that working capital. We want to make sure that in the long run, as I talked about over time, we want to make sure that we are covering our economic costs so that we can have, you know, money to reinvest, keep our machinery updated and so on, make sure that we’re paying that long-term debt.”
The key, McClure says, is maximizing profits, not chasing yield.
“So making sure that we’re putting on what is really going to be more profitable in the long run, scouting fields, optimize the need and timing of targeted pesticide applications, you know, again, you can save cost by not necessarily applying just right off the bat, scouting fields, knowing when you need to do that. We hear that a lot from our crop specialists.”