With wheat fields about a month from harvest, Kansas farmers are bracing for what is projected to be the worst wheat crop in 60 years or more. “Wheat farmers have been living this every day,” said Marsha Boswell, a spokesperson for the Kansas Wheat Commission and the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers. “They’ve seen the effects of the drought since the crop was planted last fall. They’ve seen fields that didn’t emerge until the last couple weeks. “What’s even more heartbreaking than that is the few fields that looked good a couple weeks ago are going downhill in areas that have missed out on recent rains. I think most farmers are just wanting to forget this year’s crop and move on to next year.”
Source: Salina Journal

As Kansas businesses struggle to find workers to fill open positions and a series of megaprojects promise to create thousands of more jobs, state and local officials are promoting non-university options to students. ‘A lot of work is going on around the cosmosphere of not only recruiting businesses, but also ensuring that those businesses have talent and then twice-fold keeping our our talent here in Kansas and recruiting talent to and back to Kansas,’ said assistant secretary of commerce Mike Beene. Beene, who oversees the state’s workforce services and is a former teacher, praised the state’s education system — from K-12 to community and technical colleges to universities — but not the state’s ability to keep the talent instead of exporting it. He hopes high school career and technical programs and similar efforts at community colleges and tech schools will reverse that trend.
Source: CJonline

The interest rate table above illustrates recent changes in a sample of MBIS “investment grade” yields. Every issuer’s credit is different, and other financing sources may be available. To obtain comprehensive Financial Advisory services for your local government, contact your Ranson Financial Municipal Advisor, Larry Kleeman, or Henry Schmidt.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has just published a new report on trading patterns in the primary and secondary markets for municipal bonds, which reveals notable differences in the buying behavior of individual and institutional investors in each of these markets. The authors found that individual investors generally buy bonds in the secondary market and have limited participation in the primary market, whereas institutional investors dominate the primary market. They concluded that while individual investors may have valid reasons not to access the primary market, they would likely benefit from more balanced participation between the primary and secondary markets.
Read the press release.
Read the report.