Land Cost Versus Income Made From Farming

[donhotrod]

Exploding land prices only benefit you if you sell it. It may even hurt you when it comes to property taxes.

[GleanerS]

Let me add one more thing. My dad bought 160A in the 80s just before the bottom drop out. I was always proud of him. He never took out bankruptcy. He kept his head about him and he made his way through.

I have something he didn’t have and that is a wife who works off Farm. My mom worked on Farm and was always the first one up and the last to go to bed. She would bring us hot meals to wherever we were at. My wife runs computers for an insurance company. In the fall, she can take a few days off here and there to run the S 97 through the corn. I can’t imagine farming without her.

[agwhoneedsaphd]

This is where the "passive money people, " have screwed this thing up. It's one thing to make a 3% return when u don't lift a finger, it's entirely another when you have to provide a living, service debt, repair, replace etc.

[GleanerS]

Yes and no. 80 acres will never pay for itself on corn and soybean rotation, but if you have other land or investments to help subsidize it, buying that 80 is not an all bad thing to do. Once you have it paid for, farming will be easier without the payments and when you retire, and machinery sold, now you get to rent out that land. Then you have the land to pass down to the next generation as our parents and grandparents and great grandparents did for us. I don’t figure you buy land for yourself, but rather your kids. Maybe they will want to farm the land. Maybe they will be able pass it down better and stronger. Hopefully, they will respect the land as much as we have.

[MorganOtt-neqj]

The big catch: nobody can make new land. You either have to buy it, or bid higher to rent it.

[superman]

hate to say it but what goes up must come down... so don't go out and buy something when it's selling at premium high prices ... wait for it to come down

[bobdebouwer]

In the Netherlands the government can just decide that you can't have cows anymore, that you're too close to nature, that your land is now grassland only because you left it untouched for too long etc etc and then the value plummets😮

[danw]

After the property tax in the inheritance tax, regular farmers will be taxed and priced out of owning land. It will soon belong to the lords and ladies again.

[rocksandoil]

Even building intensive farms the contribution of land is still 2-3% - that's an appraiser's perspective. So, it is the reversionary value of the land and as you say, the family farmer is screwed. My father paid $100 an acre and my neighbor just sold for $15k per acre and if I sold then almost 100% is capital gains even when considering its value at the time I inherited it ($500-600 an acre) is a tax cost bump up. And with hay, I made about $80 an acre - this year less than $40 due to drought.

[jhosk]

In any business you either change methods and practices or you get out.

[KorvidRavenscraft]

Maybe grow something other than grain?

[jeangingras]

There used to be landlords and their vassals… Today it’s financialized corporate owners using migrants to do the work.
Unrestricted capitalism leads to oligarchy.

[leebmc]

Need to make it so people can only rent land for 2 years in a row and get rid of guys buying land for the only purpose of a investment or for a rental income.

[stevenjames]

Sure and current farmers and past farmers have created that economy. It is a poor investment because it was invested in poorly.

[johnwayne]

You two wish you could be grain farmers

[jamesgraham]

Poor you so I'm a factory worker and I give my life to it like a farmer yet society changes like the market always has and you both know this gamble but yet I should feel bad for poor farmer who made the wrong decision or was stubborn like a worker many times over and we should feel bad and always bail them out because they feed us and the rest of us should be grateful I know this won't be respond to so what ever you are part of the problem and I'm not no hippie