Hey now! Government checks are direct deposit, and then a week later the FSA statement comes.
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- Thread starter SoapyCy
- Start date
I 100% believe you that "picking up rocks" is an actual necessity for farmers, but for some reason when I read that I had to chuckle.
This video made the rounds earlier in the year. Yeah, his style is kind of the prototypical, annoying Youtube character, but the content is at least somewhat accurate.
There isn't a harder working group than the dairy guys.
It depends on how the farm operates. Some guys plant and combine and that's really it. If we still farmed with horses, though, my family would do it with three legged ones because it's just a but harder. We store every bushel on the farm. That means it needs to be hauled out and we don't have a large grain setup but we do have 18 different bins to haul out from January-August. We then have a bunch of different building sites to maintain and outside of this year, that means constant mowing. Then you have to spray fence lines which is at least a couple week job. A lot of guys stay pretty damn busy in the "off-season." Some don't.
It's really a matter of how they operate and how much they decide to take on.
Ha I can see that! It sounds weird but is very essential - we pick rocks out of the field that are generally from the size of a volleyball to the size of a large beach ball, with some of them as big as a small car. If we don’t get them picked up they will cause damage to our equipment.
If I were a dairy farmer, I would sell out and go find a 9 to 5. Dairy farming sucks. Too much work with too little profit.
If you have any sort of livestock or horses or whatever checking the boundary fences is something that needs to be done fairly often and depending on the situation, while at least easy, it can take some time. And then if the fence is screwed up for some reason, that can be time consuming.
The cows finding the little spot to get out was always interesting.
We had a very small operation (my dad who worked a full time job called it 'an expensive hobby') but even with that, there always seemed to be something that needed to be done in the short term or for prep.
why does it matter "if neighbors are watching"? it's not like the neighbors are going to outcompete them and take away their business. I didn't understand that.
"Net worth doesn't matter because it doesn't pay the bills". That's a personal choice - if you have assets and a bill comes due - sell the asset to pay the bill!
If I have $10,000,000 in net worth and I complain about having to go to work everyday that's my own problem. It's a choice to keep working with a high net worth.
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I had my wife help pick up rocks one year. 1st day she was keeping an area in the mule for the pretty ones to use around the farm. The rest of the days there wasn’t a single pretty one
You mean businesses don’t try to take customers (in this case landlords) away by giving them a better deal?
Will use an example from me, I was offered a fairly good chunk of change for a livestock facility about two years ago. My CPA ran the tax consequences on it. He told me the price would end with a 52/48 split to me/government. That made it a situation where I could make more with it than without it. When it comes to selling an asset, it would be like your business selling half your computers, would end up slamming the brakes on a lot of production. If you are talking land, many fields come up at best once in a generation, so if you sell it, you may not find anything like it again while you are alive.
I had a similar conversation with my son this weekend. He asked why no new families seem to get into farming, I told him that the networks and land base is so tough to get that once a family stops, you pretty much can’tget back in if you liquidate.
a few things at play here - people talk about how no one young *not from a farming background* is getting into farming... that's the tragedy of the commons, isn't it. You need low barriers to entry yet the wise personal choice for landowners is sell for as high as possible. What is good for the individual is bad for the industry.
County zoning often disallows subdividing land into smaller chunks, so they often only come up in ~40 acre chunks. For a population that usually hates government intervention, most conservative boards of supervisors have zero problems with incredibly restrictive zoning laws. If you want new people in farming don' make them buy gigantic chunks of land.
I have never heard the the 40 acre rule and have never seen it happen. Seen many 5-6 acre chunks for acreages or livestock set ups sold. So I don’t agree with that part.
That is the basics that most people try to point out, grain farming has huge capital requirements to get into. Something that has evolved over the last 50-60 years. It is thin margins but high volume now. Many landlords want a higher rent (yo will see out of staters typically hire managers who want to push as high as possible) so it creates the barrier for someone to enter. The locals prefer to do business with locals they know so it puts more walls up.
How many other capital-intensive industries have new, young people entering them? How many new young people are starting car companies, airplane manufacturing companies, etc? This isn't just an issue with agriculture.
Zoning laws vary by county, some counties allow splits of any size and shape. If someone that is young wanted to get started on a small amount of acres, they could go to one of those counties to do so. If they are a brand new entrant with no connections, location of the farm wouldn't matter so they would be free to do this.
The assets ARE the job. Would a regular employee have their employer sell their computer and stuff to do their job? No, because then you have no job. Farming is Very capital intense, especially if you want to compete these days. If your having to sell assets it means your business doesn't make money and you should really look for a new business.
If you feel like farmers have an easy job then have at it. Lots of land for sale and I mean, just throw a few seeds in the ground. Get back to us on how much money you rake in for no work.