marți, 24 februarie 2015

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


The Perfect Way To Hide Your Cat's Litter Box

Posted: 24 Feb 2015 12:19 PM PST

These people got sick of the fact that they had kitty litter boxes all over the house. After a while the smell really got to them so they decided to convert in old dresser into a storage space. It turned out to be a brilliant idea.
















via imgur

Amazing Photos Of Nature That Aren't Photoshopped

Posted: 24 Feb 2015 11:53 AM PST

Sometimes the world around you is even more impressive than any picture you could create in photoshop.
















This Is Husband Logic At Its Finest

Posted: 24 Feb 2015 10:08 AM PST

Ladies if you want something done right, definitely don't ask your husband to do it.






















15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs - Moz Blog


15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs

Posted on: Tuesday 24 February 2015 — 01:18

Posted by randfish

It's been a long time since we covered one of the most fundamental building blocks of SEO—the structure of domain names and URLs—and I think it's high time to revisit. But, an important caveat before we begin: the optimal structures and practices I'll be describing in the tips below are NOT absolutely critical on any/every page you create. This list should serve as an "it would be great if we could," not an "if we don't do things this way, the search engines will never rank us well." Google and Bing have come a long way and can handle a lot of technical challenges, but as always in SEO, the easier we make things for them (and for users), the better the results tend to be.

#1: Whenever possible, use a single domain & subdomain

It's hard to argue this given the preponderance of evidence and examples of folks moving their content from a subdomain to subfolder and seeing improved results (or, worse, moving content to a subdomain and losing traffic). Whatever heuristics the engines use to judge whether content should inherit the ranking ability of its parent domain seem to have trouble consistently passing to subdomains.

That's not to say it can't work, and if a subdomain is the only way you can set up a blog or produce the content you need, then it's better than nothing. But your blog is far more likely to perform well in the rankings and to help the rest of your site's content perform well if it's all together on one sub and root domain.

subdomain vs. subfolders

For more details and plenty of examples (in the post and comments), check out  this recent Whiteboard Friday on the topic.

#2: The more readable by human beings, the better

It should come as no surprise that the easier a URL is to read for humans, the better it is for search engines. Accessibility has always been a part of SEO, but never more so than today, when engines can leverage advanced user and usage data signals to determine what people are engaging with vs. not.

Readability can be a subjective topic, but hopefully this illustration can help:

scale of url readability

The requirement isn't that every aspect of the URL must be absolutely clean and perfect, but that at least it can be easily understood and, hopefully, compelling to those seeking its content.

#3: Keywords in URLs: still a good thing 

It's still the case that using the keywords you're targeting for rankings in your URLs is a solid idea. This is true for several reasons.

First, keywords in the URL help indicate to those who see your URL on social media, in an email, or as they hover on a link to click that they're getting what they want and expect, as shown in the Metafilter example below (note how hovering on the link shows the URL in the bottom-left-hand corner):

keywords in urls

Second, URLs get copied and pasted regularly, and when there's no anchor text used in a link, the URL itself serves as that anchor text (which is still a powerful input for rankings), e.g.:

url as anchor text

Third, and finally, keywords in the URL show up in search results, and  research has shown that the URL is one of the most prominent elements searchers consider when selecting which site to click.

urls in serps

#4: Multiple URLs serving the same content? Canonicalize 'em!

If you have two URLs that serve very similar content, consider canonicalizing them, using either a 301 redirect (if there's no real reason to maintain the duplicate) or a rel=canonical (if you want to maintain slightly different versions for some visitors, e.g. a printer-friendly page).

Duplicate content isn't really a search engine penalty (at least, not until/unless you start duplicating at very large scales), but it can cause a split of ranking signals that can harm your search traffic potential. If Page A has some quantity of ranking ability and its duplicate, Page A2, has a similar quantity of ranking ability, by canonicalizing them, Page A can have a better chance to rank and earn visits.

#5: Exclude dynamic parameters when possible

This kind of junk is ugly:

dynamic parameters in urls

If you can avoid using URL parameters, do so. If you have more than two URL parameters, it's probably worth making a serious investment to rewrite them as static, readable, text.

Most CMS platforms have become savvy to this over the years, but a few laggards remain. Check out tools like  mod_rewrite and ISAPI rewrite (for IIS) to help with this process.

Some dynamic parameters are used for tracking clicks (like those inserted by popular social sharing apps such as Buffer). In general, these don't cause a huge problem, but they may make for somewhat unsightly and awkwardly long URLs. Use your own judgement around whether the tracking parameter benefits outweigh the negatives.

vanity domain urls click volume

Research from a  2014 RadiumOne study suggests that social sharing (which has positive, but usually indirect impacts on SEO) with shorter URLs that clearly communicate the site and content perform better than non-branded shorteners or long, unclear URL strings.

#6: Shorter > longer

Shorter URLs are, generally speaking, preferable. You don't need to take this to the extreme, and if your URL is already less than 50-60 characters, don't worry about it at all. But if you have URLs pushing 100+ characters, there's probably an opportunity to rewrite them and gain value.

This isn't a direct problem with Google or Bing—the search engines can process long URLs without much trouble. The issue, instead, lies with usability and user experience. Shorter URLs are easier to parse, to copy and paste, to share on social media, and to embed, and while these might all add up to only a fractional improvement in sharing or amplification, every tweet, like, share, pin, email, and link matters (either directly or, often, indirectly).

#7: Match URLs to titles most of the time (when it makes sense)

This doesn't mean that if the title of your piece is "My Favorite 7 Bottles of Islay Whisky (and how one of them cost me my entire Lego collection)" that your URL has to be a perfect match. Something like

randswhisky.com/my-favorite-7-islay-whiskies

would be just fine. So, too would

randswhisky.com/blog/favorite-7-bottles-islay-whisky

or variations on these. The matching accomplishes a mostly human-centric goal, i.e. to imbue an excellent sense of what the web user will find on the page through the URL and then to deliver on that expectation with the headline/title.

It's for this same reason that we strongly recommend keeping the page title (which engines display prominently on their search results pages) and the visible headline on the page a close match as well—one creates an expectation, and the other delivers on it.

clear vs unclear url on facebook

For example, above, you'll see two URLs I shared on Facebook. In the first, it's wholly unclear what you might find on the page. It's in the news section the BBC's website, but beyond that, there's no way to know what you might find there. In the second, however, Pacific Standard magazine has made it easy for the URL to give insight into the article's content, and then the title of the piece delivers:

We should aim for a similar level of clarity in our own URLs and titles.

#8: Including stop words isn't necessary

If your title/headline includes stop  words (and, or, but, of, the, a, etc.), it's not critical to put them in the URL. You don't have to leave them out, either, but it can sometimes help to make a URL shorter and more readable in some sharing contexts. Use your best judgement on whether to include or not based on the readability vs. length.

You can see in the URL of this particular post you're now reading, for example, that I've chosen to leave in "for" because I think it's easier to read with the stop word than without, and it doesn't extend the URL length too far.

#9: Remove/control for unwieldy punctuation characters

There are a number of text characters that become nasty bits of hard-to-read cruft when inserted in the URL string. In general, it's a best practice to remove or control for these. There's a great  list of safe vs. unsafe characters available on Perishable Press:

safe vs unsafe characters in urls

It's not merely the poor readability these characters might cause, but also the potential for breaking certain browsers, crawlers, or proper parsing.

#10: Limit redirection hops to two or fewer

If a user or crawler requests URL A, which redirects to URL B. That's cool. It's even OK if URL B then redirects to URL C (not great—it would be more ideal to point URL A directly to URL C, but not terrible). However, if the URL redirect string continues past two hops, you could get into trouble.

Generally speaking, search engines will follow these longer redirect jumps, but they've recommended against the practice in the past, and for less "important" URLs (in their eyes), they may not follow or count the ranking signals of the redirecting URLs as completely.

The bigger trouble is browsers and users, who are both slowed down and sometimes even stymied (mobile browsers in particular can occasionally struggle with this) by longer redirect strings. Keep redirects to a minimum and you'll set yourself up for less problems.

#11: Fewer folders is generally better

Take a URL like this:

randswhisky.com/scotch/lagavulin/15yr/distillers-edition/pedro-ximenez-cask/750ml

And consider, instead, structuring it like this:

randswhisky.com/scotch/lagavulin-distillers-edition-750ml

It's not that the slashes (aka folders) will necessarily harm performance, but it can create a perception of site depth for both engines and users, as well as making edits to the URL string considerably more complex (at least, in most CMS' protocols).

There's no hard and fast requirement—this is another one where it's important to use your best judgement.

#12: Avoid hashes in URLs unless absolutely essential

The hash (or URL fragment identifier) has historically been a way to send a visitor to a specific location on a given page (e.g. Moz's blog posts use the hash to navigate you to a particular comment, like  this one from my wife). Using URL hashes for something other than this, such as showing unique content than what's available on the page or wholly separate pages is generally a bad idea.

There are exceptions, like those Google enables for developers seeking to use the hashbang format for dynamic AJAX applications, but even these aren't nearly as clean, visitor-friendly, or simple from an SEO perspective as statically rewritten URLs. Sites from Amazon to Twitter have found tremendous benefit in simplifying their previously complex and hash/hashbang-employing URLs. If you can avoid it, do.

#13: Be wary of case sensitivity

A couple years back, John Sherrod of Search Discovery  wrote an excellent piece noting the challenges and issues around case-sensitivity in URLs. Long story short—if you're using Microsoft/IIS servers, you're generally in the clear. If you're hosting with Linux/UNIX, you can get into trouble as they can interpret separate cases, and thus randswhisky.com/AbC could be a different piece of content from randswhisky.com/aBc. That's bad biscuits.

microsoft vs unix case sensitive urls

In an ideal world, you want URLs that use the wrong case to automatically redirect/canonicalize to the right one. There are htaccess rewrite protocols to assist ( like this one)—highly recommended if you're facing this problem.

#14: Hyphens and underscores are preferred word separators

Notably missing (for the first time in my many years updating this piece) is my recommendation to avoid underscores as word separators in URLs. In the last few years, the search engines have successfully overcome their previous challenges with this issue and now treat underscores and hyphens similarly.

Spaces can work, but they render awkwardly in URLs as %20, which detracts from the readability of your pages. Try to avoid them if possible (it's usually pretty easy in a modern CMS).

#15: Keyword stuffing and repetition are pointless and make your site look spammy

Check out the search result listing below, and you'll see a whole lot of "canoe puppies" in the URL. That's probably not ideal, and it could drive some searchers to bias against wanting to click.

keyword stuffing urls

Repetition like this doesn't help your search rankings—Google and Bing have moved far beyond algorithms that positively reward a keyword appearing multiple times in the URL string. Don't hurt your chances of earning a click (which CAN impact your rankings) by overdoing keyword matching/repetition in your URLs.


Best of luck with all your URL creation and optimization efforts! Please feel free to leave any additions, ideas, or observations in the comments below.


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Seth's Blog : Shoes that don't fit (and free salt)

Shoes that don't fit (and free salt)

A beautiful pair of shoes, but one size too small, on sale and everything.... Not worth buying, not for you, not at any price. Because shoes that don't fit aren't a bargain.

And at a restaurant, you may have noticed that there's no extra charge for salt. You can have as much salt as you want on your food, for free. (Of course, it's not really free, it's part of the cost of the meal, so we paid for it, so we might as well get our money's worth, might as well use a lot.) Of course, that's silly, because regardless of how much we were billed for the salt, no matter how unlimited our access to it is, using more is merely going to ruin our meal. Too much salt isn't a bargain.

Buffets (like life, organizations, projects, art...) aren't actually, "all you can eat." They're, "all you care to eat." Which is something else entirely. Just because you can have it doesn't mean you want it. Just because we paid for it doesn't mean we should use all of it.

       

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luni, 23 februarie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Uneven Housing Recovery in Pictures: Florida, Arizona, Illinois the Worst Large-Population Performers

Posted: 23 Feb 2015 05:12 PM PST

The latest Black Knight HPI Report shows what I call the "Uneven Housing Recovery".

Nationally, prices are up 4.5% from a year ago, and down 0.1% from last month. Variances are wide.

A few pictures will explain what I mean. 

Biggest Movers This Month



Biggest Metro Movers This Month



Think Florida looks good?

Then let's take a look at the largest 20 states in alphabetical order.

Performance of Largest 20 States



click on any chart for sharper image

Percentages are relative changes of HPI from dates shown to December 2014. Numerical ranking by most recent month's percentage change follows state name.

I reformatted the top-20 Black Knight table double-wide to make it easier to read.

Home prices in Texas and Colorado exceed their 2005-2006 high! New York has nearly recovered to its previous high in 2007.

Worst Large-Population Performers

  1. Florida -30.3% since April 2006
  2. Arizona -29.5% since May 2006
  3. Illinois -22.5% since July 2006
  4. Connecticut -20.9% since July 2006
  5. California -20.2% since May 2006
  6. Michigan -20.1% since July 2005
  7. Maryland -19.9% since June 2007
  8. New Jersey -19.5% since June 2006

Performance Analysis

Florida, Arizona, and Illinois are the three worst of the largest 20 states in terms of recovery.

Recovery has to do with several factors including magnitude of previous bubble, jobs, and tax policy.

Illinois did not have the bubble of numerous cities in Florida, Arizona, or California. Nor has Illinois had to suffer through a Detroit-style bankruptcy ... yet.

Rather, Illinois lags in the recovery because of poor job prospects, poor tax policy, and what most would consider poor weather. There is little here to attract businesses or immigrants from other states.

In particular, the property tax situation in Illinois is unsustainable. A home that might sell for $300,000 could require as much as $7,000 a year in property taxes, or more.

Taxes varies depending on home rule rates and how aggressive someone is willing to fight tax hikes and property valuations. I have fought tax hikes twice in the last 10 years and won. Most don't. If everyone did, no one would get them.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Union Group Mobilizes "Against" Pay Hike

Posted: 23 Feb 2015 01:27 PM PST

In what may be a first (otherwise an extreme rarity), a substantial force within a union has mobilized against a pay hike to $9.00 per hour from essentially nothing.

"Nothing" you say? Yes, it happens in small non-profit theaters that pay aspiring actors $7 to $15 per performance. Rehearsal time does not count.

Curiously, but rightfully so, the aspiring actors realize there will be no work at all if they have to get paid $9.00 an hour for acting and rehearsals.

Reader Richard, who works in the film industry writes ...

Hi Mish
Actor Equity (the union of stage actors) wants to force small theaters in Los Angeles "to pay the legally mandated minimum wage." There is no doubt this move will decimate local theater and goes against the vast majority of their LA member's wishes.

We have a few theater districts in the city which have sprouted restaurants that depend on the theater traffic to survive. Whole areas such as North Hollywood have transformed themselves as the NoHo Arts District [a play off the SoHo Arts District in New York City] all because of the theaters in the area. 

Many actors have vowed to withdraw from the union. I myself work almost exclusively in the film and television these days, but I started my career in theater and benefited from the contracts negotiated by Actors Equity.

But Los Angeles theater is a completely different animal from New York theater and includes many actor run companies with national and international reputations. The economics of LA theater just do not support the model Actors Equity wants to foist on the theater community and will result in the closing of dozens of very well regarded theaters.

Anyway I thought it was an interesting twist on unions. Actors Equity has a vote planned for March 25th but the result is only advisory and the union leadership will them do what they want.

Hope you are well. Keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Richard
Small Theater Community Speaks Out Against a Pay Hike

The LA Times reports, L.A. County's Small-Theater Community Speaks Out on Proposed Wage Hike.
An impassioned, two-hour, open-mike meeting about the future of Los Angeles County's small-theater community Saturday at the Renberg Theatre at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in Hollywood drew an overflow crowd of well over 200 theater folks.

With just one exception, the dozens of speakers, including a calmly emphatic Tim Robbins, were motivated by a deep fear of what a proposed higher wage might do to their artistic scene.

Actors' Equity, the national union for stage actors, is seriously considering imposing a $9 hourly minimum wage for its members when they perform or rehearse in L.A.'s small venues.

Robbins and the rest think $9 an hour is exorbitant and that actors should continue working on small stages for what they have been receiving for decades. The going rate is $7 to $15 per performance, depending on ticket prices and seating capacities. Rehearsals, which can consume scores of hours, pay nothing.

Most of the small theaters are nonprofit organizations that need donations to augment ticket sales in order to sustain what's typically a hand-to-mouth existence.

Robbins is the founder and artistic director of the Actors' Gang in Culver City, launched before his 1988 ascent to movie stardom in "Bull Durham."

He stepped to a microphone wearing a pale blue denim jacket and said it made no sense for union officers to expect small theaters to survive under the proposed new terms. Even with volunteer labor from actors, Robbins began, "I've lost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. I should rephrase that — invested [it]."

The Actors' Gang has often done shows with big casts, developing new plays from scratch in lengthy rehearsal processes. Some have toured nationally and overseas — where real wages kicked in.

"I've gotten so much out of it, and so have the actors," Robbins said. "Actors have launched careers." The Actors' Gang would have died in the cradle, he said, had there been a minimum wage rule when it began.

"I may be the only person in this room voting yes," said Ann Colby Stocking. She said that she and some actor friends had in fact approached union leaders asking their help because they need better pay.

She painted the scenario she has seen actors endure: "They've come [to rehearsals] from working an eight-hour job. They're crying from exhaustion, they're fainting. They can't take time off, because they can't afford it." With better pay, she suggested, the play could be the thing, the exhausting day job, less so.

Stocking was politely received, even applauded. But by the time the meeting broke up it looked as if a civil war were at hand and that, in an extreme rarity for the U.S. labor movement, a substantial force within a union was mobilizing against a pay hike.
I believe this is a first. Yes, we have seen non-union forces organize against a union drive and alleged higher wages, but I cannot recall ever seeing unions rally against pay hikes. And this membership is not only against a pay hike, but overwhelmingly against.

Hats off to the LA guild for recognizing the theater itself may go under if this hike is forced upon them. So why be in a union at all?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Beggar Thy Taxpayer: Currency Wars, QE Strain Life Insurers and Pension Plans; Negative Returns With 4-7% Promises

Posted: 23 Feb 2015 11:28 AM PST

I received an interesting email on Saturday from Bob Hoye at Institutional Advisors regarding "Currency Wars".

Bob writes ...
Currency wars are very much the talk of the times. This was also the case in the last postbubble contraction when many countries sought to enhance exports through depreciation. And "beggar thy neighbour" policy was a feature of the early 1930s as well.

This time around it is an intelligentsia stricken by the fear of deflation, trying to ramp up anything that trades. But commodity markets and producer prices have not been "accommodating" central bankers. Instead there has been rampant inflation in financial assets, which has reached excessive levels of speculation. Clearly, it is a "beggar thy taxpayer" policy.
Currency Wars and QE Strain Life Insurance Companies and Taxpayers

Bob gets credit for the phrase "beggar thy taxpayer" but I have been thinking along those lines for quite some time.

Pension plan assumptions are always on my mind and a Financial Times article earlier this month puts a spotlight on the problem. Please consider Draghi's QE Strains German life Assurers.
In a report published on Wednesday, Moody's said the "profitability and solvency" of the industry in Germany would come under further strain from the European Central Bank's bond buying.

German life companies, which have estimated liabilities of more than €700bn, sell policies that offer annual guaranteed returns to policyholders, who use the products to save for retirement.

Similar products are sold across Europe, but the guarantees have been particularly generous in Germany.

The ECB's plan to buy €60bn worth of bonds each month has further depressed yields, giving the industry greater concerns. The yield on Germany's benchmark 10-year bond has fallen to 0.35 per cent

To help cope with the pressure, insurers have been reducing the returns they pledge to policyholders. The maximum guarantee sanctioned by authorities in Germany is now 1.25 per cent. The industry has also sought to sell more products that have no guarantees — effectively placing the investment risks with policyholders instead of shareholders.

However, the insurers still need to meet commitments from policies sold in previous years, for which the guarantees have been as high as 4 per cent.
Negative Returns With 4% Promises

Insurers have made 4% promises but long-term bonds yield close to zero.

Benjamin Serra, senior credit officer at Moody's said "They are increasingly constrained by the high level of guarantees sold in the past." 2015 will be a "pivotal and challenging year" for Germany's life assurance industry. Moody's maintained a "negative outlook" for the sector.

As of Friday, 10-year German bonds yield 0.39%. Five-year German bonds yield -0.07%.

Recall that the ECB pledged on January 22 to buy 60 billion euros ($68 billion) of assets a month for at least 19 months in its inane pledge to avert deflation. Buy from where?

Hoarding Bonds

Reuters asked an interesting question last Friday: ECB's Draghi wants to buy bonds, but who will sell?
Weeks before the European Central Bank begins a program to buy about 1 trillion euros of euro zone government bonds, banks, pension funds and insurers across the continent are hoarding them for regulatory or accounting reasons.

"We prefer to hold on to them," said Antoine Lissowski, deputy CEO at French insurer CNP Assurances. "The ECB's policy ... is reaching its limits now."

Insurers and pension funds typically buy long-term debt. They could make hefty profits selling to the ECB. But the money would have to be re-invested in other bonds whose yields would be much lower than their long-term commitments to clients -- a regulatory no-no.

"If we were to sell bonds, we would make huge capital gains, but we will then have to reinvest that money at a yield of 0.5 percent, set against liabilities at 3.50-3.75 (percent)," said Bart de Smet, the CEO of Belgian insurer Ageas.

RBS strategists see a 40 percent chance that ECB purchases would help turn German 10-year Bund yields negative this year.
US Yield Curve



US Promises

In the US, pension funds have not made 1.25% promises or even 4% promises, but rather 7.0%+ promises with the 10-year bond yielding 2.13%.

Annuities promise 6% or so.

How you get 6% in a 2% world?

The correct answer is: you don't. But insurers and pension plans try, by taking risks. And the more risk they take, and the more margin they use, drives prices higher and higher into bubble territory.

Seven Year Negative Returns

As of January 31, 2015, Stock and bond prices are so stretched that GMO's 7-Year Asset Class Real Return Forecast shows negative real returns for seven years in US equities and bonds.



"The chart represents real return forecasts for several asset classes and not for any GMO fund or strategy. These forecasts are forward‐looking statements based upon the reasonable beliefs of GMO and are not a guarantee of future performance. Forward‐looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and GMO assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update forward‐looking statements. Forward‐looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, which change over time. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in forward‐looking statements. U.S. inflation is assumed to mean revert to long‐term inflation of 2.2% over 15 years."

As of December 31, 2014 GMO managed $116 billion in assets.

Broken Model

In the US, pension plans have aggressively shifted from investing in AAA rated bonds to equities and junk bonds because yields in US treasuries and AAA rated corporates is not high enough.

Denial that this has happened is nearly everywhere one looks. Of course the Fed, and most others, cannot and will not see a bubble until it bursts wide open.

Even if the air is let out slowly (something that has never happened in practice), negative real returns, and perhaps zero nominal returns for seven years is the only other plausible outcome unless one expects an even bigger bubble coupled with even longer negative returns in the future.

I will do a follow-up on this broken model later this week with a look at US pension plans, especially State of Illinois promises that absolutely cannot be met.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Farmers Walk Away From Leases Due to Plunging Grain Prices

Posted: 23 Feb 2015 12:43 AM PST

Walking Away Farmer Style

The price of corn is at a price seen in late 2006, wheat late 2005, and soybeans 2004. Land prices, lease prices, equipment prices, and fertilizer are much higher.

This has put the squeeze on many farmers, especially those who lease land. The result is best described as "walking away farmer style".

Please consider Rent Walkouts Point to Strains in U.S. Farm Economy
Across the U.S. Midwest, the plunge in grain prices to near four-year lows is pitting landowners determined to sustain rental incomes against farmer tenants worried about making rent payments because their revenues are squeezed.

Some grain farmers already see the burden as too big. They are taking an extreme step, one not widely seen since the 1980s: breaching lease contracts, reducing how much land they will sow this spring and risking years-long legal battles with landlords.

The tensions add to other signs the agricultural boom that the U.S. grain farming sector has enjoyed for a decade is over. On Friday, tractor maker John Deere (DE.N) cut its profit forecast citing falling sales caused by lower farm income and grain prices.

Many rent payments – which vary from a few thousand dollars for a tiny farm to millions for a major operation – are due on March 1, just weeks after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated net farm income, which peaked at $129 billion in 2013, could slide by almost a third this year to $74 billion.

The costs of inputs, such as fertilizer and seeds, are remaining stubbornly high, the strong dollar is souring exports and grain prices are expected to stay low.

How many people are walking away from leases they had committed to is not known. In Iowa, the nation's top corn and soybean producer, one real estate expert says that out of the estimated 100,000 farmland leases in the state, 1,000 or more could be breached by this spring.

The stakes are high because huge swaths of agricultural land are leased.

Landowners are reluctant to cut rents. Some are retirees who partly rely on the rental income from the land they once farmed, and the rising number of realty investors want to maintain returns.

One catch is that many landlords never thought to file the paperwork to put a lien on their tenants' assets. That means landowners "can't go grab anything off the farm if the tenant doesn't pay," McEowen said. "It also means that they're going to be behind the bank."
Corn Monthly


click on any chart for sharper image

Wheat Monthly



Soybean Monthly



If grain prices stay depressed, can lease prices and land prices be far behind?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com