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Ag Briefs

Farm Transition workshop shares information, strategies for transferring the farm

The Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association has joined University of Minnesota Extension to present “Farm Transition & Estate Planning: Create Your Farm Legacy.” This full-day workshop is filled with practical information and strategies to help farm families begin the process of transferring the farm business to the next generation.

In “Farm Transition & Estate Planning: Create Your Farm Legacy,” participants get a greater understanding of transfer strategies, tax issues related to the transfer process, discuss methods for treatment of heirs in the transfer process, as well as how to go about preparing to meet with your transition and estate planning team. As part of the workshop, participants will be given time to complete worksheets related to the application of different transfer strategies as well as listing personal, family, and farm business goals. The result is the beginning of a farm business transfer plan.

Estate planning is a crucial part of the transition process as well. The workshop also includes a discussion of wills and trusts, life insurance, power-of-attorney, long-term health care issues, and more. This information will help to complete the transfer plan.

“Farm Transition & Estate Planning: Create Your Farm Legacy” is from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, at the Extension Regional Office in Worthington located at 1527 Prairie Drive. Additional workshop information and registration form are available at http://swroc.cfans.umn.edu/news. To register for the workshop contact Sharon Leopold, leopo008@umn.edu or 507-372-3900 ext 3901. The registration deadline is Jan. 13.

The workshop is jointly sponsored by Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association in cooperation with University of Minnesota.

Greitens picks Chinn as Missouri’s new agriculture director

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov.-elect Eric Greitens has chosen a northeast Missouri woman to be the next director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture.

Greitens announced on his Facebook page Tuesday that he had selected Chris Chinn, 41, to lead the department. She and her husband, Kevin, are fifth-generation farmers who raise hogs, cattle and crops near Clarence in Shelby County.

The governor-elect called Chinn an “outsider” and a leading advocate for agriculture and family farms. In 2013, she was named by the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance as one of its Faces of Farming & Ranching.

Greitens, who will be sworn in on Jan. 9, said Chinn will help him fight lawyers, activists and the federal government, who he says are using unnecessary regulations, reckless lawsuits and political threats against family farmers.

Chinn was a vocal supporter of a state “right to farm” constitutional amendment narrowly approved by voters in 2014. Proponents touted it as a pre-emptive measure against potential attempts to limit the way farmers raise hogs, poultry and cattle or to restrict the use of genetically modified crops.

The amendment passed by a margin of less than one-quarter of a percentage point out of nearly 1 million votes cast, and the Missouri Supreme Court last year upheld it.

A message left Tuesday by The Associated Press on Chinn’s home telephone was not immediately returned.

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