Why Wipfli?
Wipfli’s support is rooted in strong relationships and extensive process manufacturing experience.
We work with clients across the food and beverage value chain — including growers, ranchers, manufacturers and retailers — giving us a holistic perspective on your needs and opportunities. We also seek to deeply understand your businesses, combining the personalized attention of a local partner with the scale and capabilities of a national presence.
From empowering technology innovation to increasing efficiency, we’re ready to help you optimize performance and strengthen resilience.
Wipfli’s tax team helps you take advantage of valuable credits and incentives, including R&D tax credits, while optimizing strategies like cost segregation to improve cash flow. Our proactive approach helps you maintain compliance while uncovering opportunities to reinvest in growth.
Running a food and beverage manufacturing business requires your full attention, but back-office demands like payroll and HR can divert valuable time and resources. Wipfli’s outsourced services provide scalable solutions for finance and accounting, HR, IT and executive leadership so you can focus on production.
From AI and automation to IT strategy and modernization, Wipfli helps you leverage technology to improve efficiency and stay competitive. We also deliver robust cybersecurity solutions to protect your business from evolving threats, giving you confidence in your digital transformation.
Wipfli’s strategy and operations services help you drive process improvement, enhance operational performance and create strategies for sustainable growth. We also support leadership development to help your organization foster the talent you need to succeed in a competitive market.
M&A growth and consolidation continue to reshape the food and beverage industry. Wipfli provides end-to-end transaction advisory services, including buy-side, sell-side and valuation support. We help you identify opportunities, maximize value and confidently navigate every stage.
Expand globally with confidence. Wipfli’s international expansion services help you develop strategies for global growth and optimize operations across borders. Whether you’re managing a global supply chain or international tax compliance, we provide support to help you expand your footprint.
Wipfli goes beyond reports to deliver insights that help food and beverage manufacturers strengthen internal controls, mitigate risk and make informed decisions. From audit readiness to financial statement reviews, our team provides the insights you need for smarter growth.
Risk is everywhere in beverage and food production, from supply chain disruptions to cybersecurity threats and operational inefficiencies. Wipfli helps manufacturers identify, assess and mitigate risks with support for areas including enterprise and operational risk management.
Beyond your business, Wipfli can help you protect what matters most. Our private client services team helps owners plan for the future, including support for business transition strategies and estate and wealth planning, so you can preserve your legacy and help ensure a smooth handoff to the next generation.
Reach out to our team
Let’s talk about how our experienced food and beverage manufacturing advisors can make your business more resilient and profitable. Ask us for help streamlining operations, implementing technology, claiming tax incentives, managing risk and more.
Insights and resources
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FSMA 204 compliance: Why data is the key
Prepare for FSMA 204 compliance with connected data, ERP integration and stronger traceability processes. Identify data gaps before the July 20, 2028, deadline.
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Legacy soil fertility deduction: A farmland tax guide
When farmland or ranchland changes hands, buyers often focus on the value of the land itself. However, many agricultural properties contain a significant amount of residual soil fertility accumulated over years of fertilizer applications. The legacy soil fertility deduction (also known as the excess soil fertility deduction) allows a portion of the purchase price attributable to that fertility to be separated from the land and deducted, resulting in valuable tax savings for farmers. What is legacy soil fertility? Soil fertility represents the nutrients available in the soil, such as phosphorus, potassium and other elements that support crop and grassland production. When agricultural land is purchased that contains nutrient levels above what would normally be expected, a portion of the purchase price may be attributable to those nutrients rather than the land itself. Unlike land, which generally cannot be depreciated, legacy soil fertility is considered a wasting asset. As crops utilize those nutrients, the value declines. Because of this limited life, the cost attributable to excess fertility may be amortized and deducted over a period of years, or potentially all in the year of purchase. What is the benefit of the legacy soil fertility deduction? The primary benefit of a legacy soil fertility deduction is straightforward: Accelerated tax deductions without spending additional cash. Instead of allocating the entire purchase price to non-depreciable land, the purchaser may be able to allocate part of the cost to excess soil fertility and recover that amount through deductions. Potential benefits include: Lower taxable income during the amortization period Improved after-tax cash flow Better return on agricultural land investments A more accurate reflection of the assets acquired in a land purchase For large tracts of highly productive land, the legacy soil fertility component can be substantial, making the tax savings meaningful. What is a soil fertility study? A soil fertility study is typically performed by a qualified agronomist or soil scientist. The analysis compares actual nutrient levels to normal levels for the area. The study seeks to determine: The amount of nutrients present is higher than normal levels The replacement cost of those nutrients The value attributable to excess fertility at the acquisition date The resulting value becomes part of the overall purchase price allocation. When should a soil fertility study be conducted? An excess soil fertility study may be particularly valuable when: Purchasing highly productive cropland Acquiring land that has received significant fertilizer applications Buying irrigated ground with historically intensive crop production Purchasing larger tracts where even a small fertility adjustment can create significant deductions The potential deduction often increases when commodity prices and fertilizer costs are high because the replacement value of nutrients becomes more substantial. The best time to evaluate excess soil fertility is before or shortly after acquiring farmland. Waiting too long may make it more difficult to document nutrient levels that existed at the time of purchase. However, it’s not impossible. You may be able to go back multiple years to take missed deductions with the right testing and analysis. Agricultural land purchasers will need to work with their tax advisor and a qualified soil fertility specialist to determine whether a study is appropriate. In many situations, the cost of the analysis is small compared to the potential tax benefit. A legacy soil fertility deduction scenario Assume a farmer purchases 1,000 acres of cropland for $4,000,000. A soil fertility analysis determines that the property contains residual phosphorus and potassium levels significantly above normal agronomic levels. The study concludes that $1,000,000 of the purchase price is attributable to excess soil fertility. Without an allocation: Land basis: $4,000,000 Annual deduction: $0 Tax benefit: None from the land purchase With an excess soil fertility allocation: Land basis: $3,000,000 Excess soil fertility basis: $1,000,000 The $1,000,000 may be amortized over its allowable recovery period, generating annual deductions, or potentially all deductible in the year of purchase. If the farmer is in a combined federal and state tax bracket of 30%, every $10,000 of annual deduction could reduce tax liability by approximately $3,000. Over the recovery period, the deductions can produce $300,000 in tax savings without any additional cash outlay. The four steps to claiming a legacy soil fertility deduction Farmers, ranchers or agribusinesses that want to claim a legacy soil fertility deduction should follow these steps: Buy farmland: Part of the purchase price may be for nutrients already in the soil, not just the dirt itself. Conduct a soil fertility study: A qualified agronomist analyzes soil tests and determines whether the property contains nutrient levels above normal. Allocate part of the purchase price to excess fertility: Instead of assigning 100% of the purchase price to non-depreciable land, a portion is assigned to the excess nutrients. Claim tax deductions: The allocated fertility value can be recovered through tax deductions over its allowable recovery period, reducing taxable income and improving cash flow. The legacy soil fertility deduction is a valuable yet often overlooked tax-planning opportunity for farm and ranch land buyers. By identifying and valuing nutrients that already exist in the soil, purchasers may convert a portion of an otherwise non-depreciable land investment into a deductible tax expense. Read more Should you undo your 163(j) election? Managing intergenerational wealth with a family office Farm estate planning: Don’t fall off the estate tax exemption cliff
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Could a modern ERP help your food and beverage business become more competitive? Here’s what to know.
Most food and beverage producers still operate on legacy software systems. These systems may have served your business well in the past, but today, they make it harder to track materials, manage inventory and control costs . To solve these and other challenges, more food and beverage companies are turning to modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. An ERP can help your business operate more efficiently and effectively by giving you new capabilities that legacy systems are simply not able to offer. Keep reading to learn more. What is an ERP? An ERP is a software platform that serves as a financial and operational hub for your food and beverage business. It allows you to understand what is happening inside your business and your supply chain so you can make smarter, more proactive decisions. Core ERP functions include accounting, finance, production and warehousing. An ERP also integrates with additional peripheral systems you may already be using, like an MES, EDI or compliance reporting. By linking with peripheral systems, an ERP helps make all of your operations more visible and effective. In the past, many ERP companies didn’t offer support for batch manufacturing. But that’s changed, with a wide range of ERP solutions now available that can help food and beverage producers leapfrog decades worth of tech-based or operational problems. How does implementing an ERP benefit food and beverage businesses? An ERP is a foundational software tool that helps a business operate more efficiently and effectively. But for food and beverage producers, specifically, it can also offer a competitive edge, because so many of your peers are still operating on older systems. Here are key benefits you could see from an ERP transformation: 1. Operational visibility A modern, cloud-based ERP gives you clear visibility into what’s happening inside your business. This includes not just your financials but also your production process, as your ERP can share data with your manufacturing execution system (MES) to give you a big-picture perspective on your production lines. As a result, your decision makers gain more real-time clarity into key questions like which of your products are most profitable, and that can help your business adapt to meet today’s challenges. 2. Work more efficiently An ERP can dramatically speed up many of your older manual or spreadsheet-based processes. For example, your team may currently be manually collecting data from peripheral systems and putting it into spreadsheets for analysis and reporting purposes. An ERP can automate that entire process, freeing up your team to focus on higher-level work. 3. Better cost controls Older systems typically only offer insight into standard and average costs. A new ERP also allows you to account for additional costs like supply chain disruptions, one-time expenses and climate or weather-related issues. You’ll also be able to more rigorously look for ways to cut down on waste in the production process. 4. Easier training Legacy systems make onboarding new team members harder because those systems have often been patchworked together over decades. Training new employees on a modern ERP allows for faster, more standardized onboarding. It also insulates your business against risks like losing the one employee who understands how your legacy accounting system actually works. 5. Integrated systems A new ERP makes all of your systems more effective because it helps serve as a hub for your peripheral systems. This allows you to bring together data much more quickly, rather than having to painstakingly pull it from each individual peripheral system, and it also makes you better able to take advantage of AI , which needs all that data to operate effectively. 6. Competitive advantage Most food and beverage producers are still running on legacy systems. If you migrate to an ERP while your competitors are still operating on decades-old software and spreadsheets, you will be digging with a backhoe while your peers are relying on shovels. 7. Happier team New systems allow your team members to avoid monotonous, time-consuming tasks. They also help you streamline your workflows, making for a better work experience for your team as a whole. 8. Experimentation Better tracking capabilities make it easier to experiment with new product ideas. You’ll be able to more quickly assess the performance of various product tests to decide if an experiment is paying off. 9. Avoid product shortages New ERPs dramatically improve your materials tracking and inventory management capabilities. This helps you avoid production slowdowns and keep shelves full of your products. 10. Simplified recall and compliance Many food and beverage companies are still handling recalls and other key compliance tasks out of spreadsheets. A modern ERP allows you to largely automate this process, quickly notifying stakeholders, tracking affected batches and more. How do you successfully migrate to a new ERP for your food and beverage business? Food and beverage CFOs and operational leaders considering an ERP migration should focus on how an ERP can help solve specific business problems. Here are key steps to a successful upgrade process: 1. Know thyself Start from a place of curiosity. You may have been running on the same systems for a decade or more. So, what new options are out there? Learn more about what modern ERPs can deliver. Then think about specific processes within your business that a new ERP could help improve. Take the time to dive in and understand how your business works right now so you can assess whether an ERP would allow you to operate more effectively. What specific business problems could an ERP help you solve? 2. Consult an advisor Once you have specific ideas about how you could use an ERP to improve your existing processes, pull in an advisory firm. Talk with your advisor about what you want to change within your business. Your advisor can help you weigh different ERP options to make sure your systems align with your needs. Look for an advisory firm that understands both enterprise tech and the food and beverage business. 3. Consider food-specific factors in potential ERPs Food and beverage businesses need specific features from an ERP. Be sure any options you are considering include capabilities like compliance, traceability, shelf life and ingredient blending, not just a generic pledge that they work for food companies. 4. Think about nonfood-specific factors as well Also consider nonfood-specific elements when choosing an ERP. Factors like purchasing, accounting, tracking profitability and managing vendor or supplier relationships all matter. A good ERP will fit your business holistically. 5. Factor in whether an ERP can be tailored Even the best ERP options probably won’t offer everything you need off the shelf, so learn more about whether your potential ERP options can be tailored, if needed. This can allow you to account for elements like protecting recipes or other trade secrets that you don’t want exposed on public cloud servers or shared with AI. Read more Why are manufacturers missing out on the 179D tax deduction? AI disruption is coming for manufacturing. How should your firm adapt? Can the qualified production property rule help your manufacturing firm reduce tax payments?
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