I am with Caustic on this one. The problem now is that land is valued so high that cattle can not and are not expect to pay the note in many many places. If I had some fancy offfarm job making $150g and up a year, I probably would do the same thing and use that high income it to acquire land and cattle; BUT if you lose that big time job or cattle prices drop to the point that they can't cover the fertilizer and the fuel costs a lot of people will start hurting especially since it has become harder to get credit now. I am not predicting disaster.......YET; but the ranch economy is tied to the general economy much much more strongly than it ever has been before. A lot of ranches have been bought with nonfarm income as tax shelters, hunting clubs, or for portfolio diversification. IF the situation in the general economy worsens dramatically in the coming 24 months, you COULD see some such new property owners dump their rural real estate holdings (as banks, builders, investors, and many homeowners are now dumping their residential holdings). When THAT happens the value of land would drop and eventually even profitable ranches would see their balance sheets (and their credit limits) decrease proportionately. The big hedge though has been that since the value of the dollars is ~60% of what it was 18 months ago, bargain hunting foreign money has entered many U.S. real estate markets (like Manhatten) preventing the freefall that would otherwise have occurred. Even though ranch property is near all time highs as measured in dollars it has dropped substantially if your measuring stick is Euros or Yen and unemployment is still insanely low despite the influx of foreign labor (which has kept labor from following food and fuel prices up). It is really too early to predict how all the cards will fall; but I am far less bullish than I was six or twelve months ago.