What's the most profitable type of small-scale farming? (tractors, fertilizer, inspection)
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I'd advise anyone considering a farm, to NOT buy land first.
Most people are dumb-founded by this. Don't you need land to farm??
Sometimes, yes you do. But you don't have to own it. You can lease it for much less than it would cost to buy it, and pay taxes on it. It will probably be better land than many people could afford to buy. I was shocked at the number of acres that are no longer in production, and just sitting idle. People will often be glad to lease you some of their acreage. It offsets their taxes.
So, save yourself some debt, and start out by leasing your first few acres. The side benefit of it is, if you decide that farming isn't for you, you can just walk away and not renew the lease. Much simpler than trying to sell a failed farm.
Never buy what you can rent, lease, or hire out for less. This goes for all sorts of things, including a man with a tractor. Much less cost to hire that out, rather than going into debt to buy even a good used tractor. Think about the possibilities.
Research SPIN farming. Also watch The Urban Farmer on YouTube. He runs a profitable sustainable operation that uses people's yards in urban areas. Also there's some people who make decent money growing micro greens and selling them at farmers markets.
I did not read all of the 32 pages here. Holy Cow! Of the several pages I did read I did not see anybody post anything on ornamental nurseries. In my area there are some large nurseries that sell all over the country and some small specialized places. You can't eat most of what ornamental nurseries sell, but it is still a viable agricultural idea in certain areas.
One idea for very small nurseries is a liner nursery. You would specialize in rooting cuttings or starting plants from seeds and sell these to other nurseries that grow them on.. This can be done profitably in very small acreage, especially when you consider each liner can go for .50 or in some cases $1.00 or more. A liner only takes up a few square inches so an acre could have tens or even hundreds of thousands of liners. Tree liners from seed typically are only one crop a year (and sell for more) but shrub liners from cuttings can be several crops a year.
Pot. The winds they are a changin, and anyone who gets in now gets in a very good position.
that depends on where you are.
some places it's a little late, some it's illegal, others it's quite profitable and legal.
once legality is introduced, however, that opens up a lot of competition and
big business involvement. it really depends where u r.
I'd advise anyone considering a farm, to NOT buy land first.
Most people are dumb-founded by this. Don't you need land to farm??
Sometimes, yes you do. But you don't have to own it. You can lease it for much less than it would cost to buy it, and pay taxes on it. It will probably be better land than many people could afford to buy. I was shocked at the number of acres that are no longer in production, and just sitting idle. People will often be glad to lease you some of their acreage. It offsets their taxes.
So, save yourself some debt, and start out by leasing your first few acres. The side benefit of it is, if you decide that farming isn't for you, you can just walk away and not renew the lease. Much simpler than trying to sell a failed farm.
Never buy what you can rent, lease, or hire out for less. This goes for all sorts of things, including a man with a tractor. Much less cost to hire that out, rather than going into debt to buy even a good used tractor. Think about the possibilities.
no doubt, some will let you live on the property also.
this is all a lot easier than buying cheap, impractical acreage
and starting from scratch.
Sorry; there won't be any billion dollar crops with marijuana.
Being legal the crop value won't be any better than beer hops (similar yield too).
btw... 400 acres might be enough to produce all the marijuana likely to be consumed
in the whole US if it is legal; 800 acres certainly would be enough.
oh how wrong this statement turned out to be. care to recant?
Marijuana farming can be very profitable on small acreage, but it's pretty labor intensive at harvest time, and security is always a problem. Also, the state stores won't buy your product if it tests positive for mildew or pesticide residues, leaving you with a lot of expensive compost. Not all areas will make a crop. Mildew is particularly a problem in humid areas.
Profitable farming? Move to Colorado or Washington and put in some greenhouses and grow marijuana.
Other than that you'd be lucky to earn enough to pay your property taxes.
Southern Oregon and Northern California produce very high quality bud in outdoor grows. The high summer temps and low humidity make very happy pot plants. I think Colorado's growing season is too short. The Yakima Valley might make a good pot crop.
oh how wrong this statement turned out to be. care to recant?
Nope. The patchwork of semi and pseudo legality still has a long way to go to be actually legal.
As such the prices (and those high margins) are still leveraged, dependent on, the price influence
of black market sources with a limited and deeply controlled variety of sources.
The folks making the money still do NOT want actual legality.
If small farming operations were profitable, there would not be so many small farming towns that are losing population at the rate they are, and the towns are seeing real estate dropping in value, and a lot of empty homes and homes dropping in value every year.
People are selling out while they still can and moving to cities to find jobs to be able to live.
Even the federal government says small farms are losers, and it gets worse every year.
In many parts of the nation, you have to consider things like water rights, to be able to irrigate the land. If you don't own water rights, you cannot irrigate your property. Water rights can cost thousands of dollars per acre to be irrigated. And in addition you have to pay a yearly fee.
Land cost for good farm land today, is getting expensive. Combine that with the cost of water rights, and cost to farm the land for equipment, etc., and a small farm will not even break even. Especially when the weather for one reason or another destroys the crop, and unless you have bought crop insurance you end up with no crop, and no income for the year, even though you have had heavy expenses. A hail storm at the right time, and your crop may all be destroyed is a good example.
That is why they say farmers are rich. They may hardly scrape out a living for 20 years, but when they sell they are suddenly rich due to the value of the land. That is good if you inherit the farm free and clear of debt, but if you pay a high price for the land, and have lots of debt, it is not good for an income while you are farming.
From 1972 till I finally retired, I was an investment real estate broker. I did not sell homes for residences, but bought a huge number for my investment clients as rentals. All nice modern middle class homes. I also handled farms and ranches. First 2 weeks in the business: First day sold a 2 year old apartment house to a former co-worker as his first investment, and 3 days later sold the identical one next door to another investor. Next week in the business, exchanged a 16 unit modern apartment house for the down payment on a super nice irrigated farm. In that 2 weeks, I made more income than 80+% of all agents earn in a week. Last day as I was closing down to move to my retirement location, got a call on a half finished 50 plus unit half finished condo development that had gone under, and exchanged it for a 2,000 acre irrigated farm. In between I was involved in a number of farms and ranches, and tuned down a lot more listings for smaller farms than I listed because they made no financial sense and were on the market for years. In all my years in the business, I refused to help a client buy a farm that I knew they would end up bankrupt if they took it on. Other agents were often not as honest with the buyers as I was, and a number I refused to help would come back in 2 to 4 years, and tell me they wished they had listed to me, and not lost a lot of money and put in a lot of hard work for no return. It is a lot worse today. People will tell people that just get a small farm, do this or that type of crop, work 80 hours a week, and they will make a great living. May have worked 75 years ago, but it is a different world today. I grew up on a large ranch, and today I am 87 years old.
The reason small scale farming is going away, is the lack of profitability.
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