Ag Industry Trends & Outlooks

Autumn ushers in a season of outdoor agritourism activities across the Northeast — from hayrides to fruit picking. These activities come with a measure of risk, and understanding liability is crucial. In this month's Knowledge Exchange Partner, contributors Charles F. Gfeller and Anna-Kate M. Munsey of Gfeller Laurie LLP, examine the types of agritourism liability laws enacted by Northeast state.

With harvest upon us, apple bins are being filled and moved into storage. While this is a busy time of year for growers, it’s important to ensure you are proactively keeping track of production. We all have different ways to capture production information — whether it be a software with bin tags, hard copy logs from each trucker or sales records. The most important thing is the record keeping is done accurately.  

When people think of taxes, they typically think of their annual return. However, to best manage tax liabilities and optimize tax credits, tax planning should be an ongoing process. Even more so, over the past few years, several states in the Northeast, namely New York, have unprecedented tax incentive programs for businesses. 

Many parts of the Northeast have faced a challenging planting season with wet weather and cool temperatures; now as summer kicks off, many are seeing significant stretches of above average temperatures. Given these recent extremes in weather conditions, a review of the tax implications of various crop insurance programs is warranted.