Re: Growing from 135acres to 400acres

Posted by WA-Hal on February 26, 2010 at 16:33:04 from (208.81.157.90):

In Reply to: Growing from 135acres to 400acres posted by Negligence on February 26, 2010 at 10:37:15:

Only you can decide if you can afford to buy the land. Have you got lots of money to risk? Do you have a good, secure, well-paying outside job, or do you plan to be a full time farmer?

I grew up with the son of fairly wealthy area farmers. My friend always had the nicest clothes and the nicest car in the class when we went to school. His family had a bunch of land, with, I think, about 3000 or 4000 dryland tillable acres.

My friend was a smart farmer--he didn't get caught up in the trap of thinking he needed brand new equipment that bankrupted some other farmers around here. But 35 years of farming later, and after a couple of bad crop years, the bank refused to lend him the money he needed to plant a crop that year.

My friend ended up having to have a farm auction to pay the bank off, and lots of his equipment sold for cents on the dollar. I think he did manage to hold onto most of the land he had inherited though.

Since then my friend has worked as a farm worker for the largest farmer group in the area and also has leased his farmland to that same group. A lot of time, he is farming his own ground, using their equipment and the large farm's investment. My friend says that things are better for him now than when he worked for himself, since now he has health insurance, a regular salary plus lease payments and he can actually take a vacation now and then. He also enjoys operating the large farm's new or newer equipment, which he says he only dreamed about when he was farming for himself.

My friend has steered his children away from farming as a career. In his opinion, even as large as his landholdings are, for him, farming has not paid off very well.

I have never been to Ontario, and sure don't know if 135 acres or 400 acres, or even 600 acres is large enough to make a living on, using conventional crops. It sure wouldn't be in my area. And at the land prices around here, there is no way that I could ever make the payments on 265 acres, even at the incredibly low interest rates we now have. The ground would have to produce fantastic income to do it. And in farming, you have to PLAN on being able to withstand a couple of bad years, because in fact, they happen.

Unless you can buy the ground super cheap, and/or the value of the ground is very likely to go up a whole bunch because of development, I think I would pass. But that is MY SITUATION now. Your situation could be a lot different. Only you can decide.

Years ago I was told that there were really only 3 ways to get started in farming: 1). inherit the farm from family; 2). marry someone who would inherit the farm from family; 3) make a whole lot of money doing something else (maybe the Lottery?) and buy the farm and everything else needed to farm.

And then there was the joke about the old farmer who won $1 million in the state lottery. The news reporter asked him what he thought he would do with all that money? The old farmer thought about it a little while and then said, "Well, I guess I'll just keep on farming until it's all gone."

Good luck, hope you are able to make the right decision for YOU and your family!

Replies:

• Re: Growing from 135acres to 400acres flying belgian 19:05:25 02/26/10 (0)

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