Whose Farming and Whose Not

[hurleyjd]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/advocates-hoped-census-would-find-diversity-in-agriculture-it-found-old-white-people/ar-BBVTXjc?ocid=spartandhp

 

[Stocker Steve]

Don't need to replace retiring farmers if you consolidate the acres into another operation...

A few mega dairies here, but most big time operators have been focusing on crop production. Some dump the dairy cows, grow more grain, and background their own feeders with existing infrastructure. Else they cash flow grain production using depreciated assets.

Overvalued assets seem to be an underlying issue for those who don't scale up to 10,000 cows on 80 acres of concrete.

 

[Cross-7]

Farming is tough to break into.
Even if you're born into it.
Tractors, equipment, seed, fertilizer, crop insurance and etc is so expensive.
A million dollar operating loan is common with the hopes of making a 100k if you make a crop.
In cotton country new baler pickers are 700k, tractors are 200k, good farm hands can't be found.
Mother Nature will bring you to your knees and kick you in the crotch.
Wheat isn't worth harvesting.
Soybeans, corn, peanuts, canola, sunflowers aren't much better.
It's tough right now.

 

[5S Cattle]

Id get bigger but I can't. Every fenced in acre around here is snatched up the second someone hears about it. I was standing in a guys pens three weeks ago, about to shake his hand to lease his place and his neighbor called and jerked the rug out from under me. That was there first person I'd even been able to get my foot in the door with since I bought in, in '15