My Minnesota Woods » Legal and Financial

About the new MyMinnesotaWoods

MyMNwoods — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:05:12 +0000

We’ve just completed a major upgrade of MyMinnesotaWoods.

The changes will make it easier to find and discuss content, get to know authors, get new content notifications, and find and post material on the new discussion board.

We’d love your thoughts on the new site. Leave as little or as much info as you want on our fast feedback form.

Thank you!

Sign up for Conservation Stewardship Program by Sept. 30

Eli Sagor — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:05:32 +0000

ST. PAUL, Minn. (9/9/2009) —Registration for the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) is taking place now until Sept. 30, 2009. The CSP is a voluntary program through the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service that encourages producers to address resource concerns in a comprehensive manner by undertaking additional conservation activities; and improving, maintaining and managing existing conservation activities.

CSP is available on Tribal and private agricultural lands and non-industrial private forest land in all 50 States. This program has a continuous sign up, however the first-round deadline is Sept. 30.

The Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) will provide financial and technical assistance to eligible producers to conserve and enhance soil, water, air and related natural resources on their land. Eligible lands include cropland, grassland, prairie land, improved pastureland, rangeland, non-industrial private forest lands, agricultural land under the jurisdiction of an Indian tribe, and other private agricultural land (including cropped woodland, marshes, and agricultural land used for the production of livestock) on which resource concerns related to agricultural production could be addressed.

CSP encourages land stewards to improve their conservation performance by installing and adopting additional activities, and improving, maintaining, and managing existing activities on agricultural land and non-industrial private forest land. CSP is available nationwide on a continuous application basis.

The entire operation must be enrolled and must include all eligible land that will be under the applicant’s control for the term of the proposed contract (CSP is a five-year contract program) that is operated substantially separate from other operations.

CSP offers participants two possible types of payments:

Annual payment for installing and adopting additional activities, and improving, maintaining and managing existing activities
Supplemental payment for the adoption of resource-conserving crop rotations

Estimated Range for Annual Payments
Cropland: $12 to $22 per acre
Non-industrial private forestland: $6 to $12 per acre
Pastureland: $7 to $14 per acre
Rangeland: $5 to $10 per acre

Estimated Range for Supplemental Payments
Resource-Conservation Crop Rotation: $12 to $16 per acre

Landowners should contact their County USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) office for more information and pick up a copy of the “Producer Self-Screening Checklist.” More information is also found at the NRCS website.

Free webinar August 19, 2009: Conservation Stewardship Program

Eli Sagor — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:54:23 +0000

Passing along an announcement from the American Society for Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America. The new Conservation Stewardship Program will be of interest to many Minnesota family forest owners.

Update: This event is over.

More than the name has changed! The new Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), part of the 2008 Farm Bill, that began August 10.

CSP is a new voluntary conservation program that provides financial and technical assistance to farmers/landowners to conserve and enhance soil, water, air, and related natural resources on their land. CSP provides opportunities to both recognize excellent stewards and deliver valuable new conservation. The program will be offered to producers in all 50 states, District of Columbia and the Pacific and Caribbean areas through continuous sign-ups. The initial sign-up began August 10 and continues through September 30.

ASA and SSSA are pleased to host a special USDA update on the program and are offering this seminar at no charge. Join us on August 19, 2009 from
12:00-1:00 Central

Dave White, Chief of NRCS, will provide an overview and highlights of the program. Program leaders Steve Parkin and Dwayne Howard will provide more program information/details and all three will take your questions about program benefits and eligibility requirements.

“This program will help the Nation’s agricultural and forestry producers reach greater levels of conservation performance,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “The conservation benefits derived from maintaining and enhancing natural resources will improve the quality of soil and water, assist in addressing global climate change, and encourage environmentally responsible energy production.”

Registration – Now Closed–Event is over

More information about the Conservation Stewardship Program

Updated content on Minnesota Land Economics

Eli Sagor — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:07:34 +0000

[I thought this message might be of interest to some of our readers:]

Dear Colleague:

Three new things at Minnesota Land Economics:

1. 2009 assessor estimates of land values. Please be careful. From the site:
“In 2009, the Minnesota Legislature created several new classifications for agricultural and timber land in the state. On Minnesota Land Economics, the reclassifications are handled by treating post-2008 land valuation data in a separate section. If you select “2009 and onward” on the attributes page, you will be presented with the new valuation classifications. These changes resulted in valuation data that is not directly comparable for that reported in previous years. In some counties, the currently reported numbers aren’t even close to the previous year. Many of the inconsistencies are expected to be resolved by the time the final 2009 Mini Abstract is posted here in December. In the meantime, please be careful with the 2009 numbers!”

2. Forest Productivity Index (FPI) now available for twenty counties. Details by clicking “Read more” on the Soils Data section.

3. Graphs! On most data report pages, you’ll see a “chart-it” or “plot-it” link. Histograms, scatter plots. On the fly!

As always, please let me know if you experience any problems with Minnesota Land Economics–and thanks for your continued kind words about the service we provide.

–
Steven J. Taff, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota

Check out the updated content at Minnesota Land Economics now.

Community Supported Forestry

Eli Sagor — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:06:18 +0000

Like the idea of Community Supported Agriculture? Looking for ways to make a few bucks from your woodland? A Wisconsin family is trying Community Supported Forestry.

Source: Whole Trees Architecture

This is a pretty interesting idea: For an annual payment of $550, Roald Gundersen and Amelia Baxter of Hamburg, WI are offering unlimited access to their 140-acre wooded valley south of LaCrosse. Four of 20 spots have already sold. Read more about their operation on their website. More information is available on the Worldchanging blog and in this story from the LaCrosse Tribune.

As noted in a comment on this post, the concept is not entirely new: Woodland owners have been selling hunting leases, particularly in the southern US, for many years. But this is a new twist on the concept. The Community Supported Forestry concept is best described here by Vermont Family Forests.

(Thanks to the Community Forestry Resource Center, Vicky Sturdevant, and Pam Jakes for passing this along.)

Book review: Timber Tax Management for Family Forest Owners

Eli Sagor — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:40:28 +0000

By Mike Reichenbach, University of Minnesota Extension Forester

Timber Tax Management for Family Forest Owners
2009 Edition for Filing 2008 Tax Returns
William L. Hoover and Mark Koontz

Timber Tax Management for Family Forest Owners is written for woodland owners and tax professionals. It provides more than a description of how to file after you have a timber sale. It provides an overview of the tax code that pertains to timber sales and the operation of a woodland as a business. It covers acquisitions, how to structure the acquisition, record keeping, reforestation expenses, management and operating expenses, timber sales, casualty losses, land sales, and exchanges. The conclusion is an in-depth treatment of Form T. The book will help landowners answer questions about the legal and financial aspects of ownership.

Landowners and those who are likely to purchase or inherit woodland should read this book. It provides a step by step decision process for operation of the land as a business. The authors state on page 27 that one of the differences between a personal use activity and a business is, “The willingness of an owner to undertake an activity for profit. Owners not willing to do the record keeping should treat their activity as a personal use activity.” This clear statement and others throughout the book will help landowners, accountants and other tax professionals make decisions regarding the operation of their forestland.

The book is self published and is available in a 3 ring binder format. It may be ordered through http://www.timbertaxadvice.com/

Final and official 2008 MN rural real estate data

Eli Sagor — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:02:24 +0000

[I received this notice in an email today and thought it would be of interest to some MyMinnesotaWoods readers. -ed.]

We’ve just released the final and official 2008 Minnesota Rural Real Estate data, containing every farm and timber land sale in every county. We now have over 48,000 sales in the database, stretching back to 1990. You can also use the site to link to my annual sales report, if you don’t feel like building your own reports.

Any evidence of a Bust in rural real estate prices? Tune in and find out.

Please drop me a line if you have any questions.

Steven J. Taff
Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota
sjtaff@umn.edu, 612.625.3103
http://www.apec.umn.edu/faculty/sjtaff

Carbon trading and forests: Background and overview

Eli Sagor — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:23:13 +0000

By John DuPlissis, University of Wisconsin Extension

Recently you may have heard people talking about “carbon credits,” “carbon trading,” “carbon sequestration,” and possibly even the “Kyoto Protocols.” These phrases and other similar terms have become increasingly part of our language as energy companies, paper mills, factories, and other industrial manufacturers are looking for opportunities to offset their greenhouse gas emissions through a market-based mechanism that would pay woodland owners to grow trees.

Sounds simple and the idea is certainly very interesting to many woodland owners who are looking for opportunities to generate income from their lands. But what are the opportunities and how can you get involved? I hope to cover the issue, the opportunities and the commonly asked questions that many people have as a series of articles here. I thought that I would start with the Kyoto protocols and the basis for “trading” carbon credits.

So where did this start? The United National Framework Convention on Climate Change, commonly known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 was where it all started. Article 2 of the convention directly addressed the need to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human caused) interference with the climate system.”

One of the main greenhouse gases of concern is carbon dioxide. The burning of fossil fuels for energy, heating, and transportation has led to elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Through the process of photosynthesis trees remove and use carbon dioxide to create roots, branches, trunks and leaves. Therefore, trees and other green plants are seen as a potential solution to help slow down global climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing (sequestering) it as part of the permanent structure of the tree.

Photo: Flickr/mhaithaca

As a part of United National Framework Convention on Climate Change the “Kyoto Protocol” was established to create policies and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized nations (the United States has not ratified these protocols and is not bound by them) to reduce their greenhouse gas emission to approximately 95 percent of their 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Countries that are unable to achieve this goal through direct reduction of emissions are allowed to “compensate” by buying credits from countries that have under used their emission allowance, by investing in “cleaner” energy technology abroad or by putting money into forestry or soil conservation.

Article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol provides an option to account for increases in carbon storage through forest management. Essentially, under these rules, companies can offset the amount of carbon dioxide they release into the air through industrial processes by purchasing credits from individuals or organizations who can show they are decreasing atmospheric carbon dioxide through forest management or soil conservation activities. This is often referred to as Carbon Trading.

This article is reprinted with permission from Woodland Leaders News, published by the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. This is the first in a series. John’s future posts will address how carbon credits are traded on the Chicago Climate Exchange. For more on this issue, check our carbon credits page and John’s April 2009 post called Carbon Credits and Managed Family Forests: How it works.

Comment now on revised Tree Farm certification standards

Eli Sagor — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:27:43 +0000

All properties certified through the American Tree Farm System are required to conform to the American Forest Foundation’s Standards of Sustainability for Forest Certification.

The AFF Standards focus on the issues critical to maintaining sustainable forest practices on private forestlands in the United States, such as reforestation, air, water and soil protection, fish, wildlife and biodiversity, and wood fiber harvest. These issues, among others, comprise the nine. The AFF Standards are developed independently of the ATFS certification program by an outside panel of stakeholders.

The AFF Standards are up for renewal this year.

The 60-day public comment period on the REVISED Standards of Sustainability for Forest Certification on Private Lands begins Friday, May 1, through June 29, 2009 at 5:00 PM (EDT).

Click to learn more about the process, review the standards, and comment now.

Minnesota Conservation Funding Guide from MDA

Philip Potyondy — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:14:41 +0000

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture just launched a web-based tool to assist farmers and ag professionals regarding conservation programs and practices. Here is the announcement from Barbara Weisman below:

The Conservation Funding Guide is a one-stop, online tool Minnesota farmers and other landowners can use to learn about conservation practices, programs, and payments. It provides a wealth of information all in one place, complementing the advice available to landowners from ag & conservation professionals. It also makes a handy reference for professionals & policy makers.

For more information check out the Minnesota Conservation Funding Guide.