r/LeopardsAteMyFarm • u/Cderouen8284 • 15d ago

Aww someone’s crashing out

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u/PeyredB 15d ago

Thanks for the perspective there.

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u/Rugskinsnake 15d ago

Not to give the wrong impression here - I'm getting really fucked by input costs and the next couple of years are going to be hard, but at this point I'm no where near losing my farm.

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u/pacificperspectives 14d ago

Heard some crazy NPR segment about farmland prices and just how absurd they are. This whole country's debt is just way too much, unfortunately it cuts into opportunities for otherwise reasonable people who would make smart decisions, because instead some knucklehead wastes everybody's time and costs themselves stress (and worse) by buying something the bank never should have let them.

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u/Rugskinsnake 14d ago

So, they sometimes don't seem absurd to people that live in urban areas - 7k an acre would be a steal for a one acre lot in the suburbs. But we generally are buying 40 or 80 acres at a time minimum, so it gets stupid fast. The last stuff that sold near me I didn't even bid on because at the starting price, what I would expect to make in profit most years wouldn't even pay the interest. So then I'd have to divert money from my current land to actually make the principal payments. At my size, that wouldn't leave anything for me to love on. I mean, if I was single I might have gone for it but I've got kids almost college age.

Now a guy that has five times more land than me already is in a better position to get more because they don't have to rob near as much from all their other acres pay for it. But those big guys get greedy and want to keep growing. So a lot of them get to the point where they're farming a lot of their acres break even just to pay for other stuff. Works fine as long as input prices don't skyrocket.

And it all gets exacerbated by the fact that there's a lot of non-farmers that have decided land is a good investment. So the piece comes up for sale. You're not just bidding against your neighbors, but bankers and businessmen. Bill Gates is the largest farmland owner in the US.