Who Will Be The New Small Farmer?

PrairieMule

Ludi, your "Opinion" is spot on.

It's getting near impossible to buy anything 100 plus acres as compared to 30 years ago. Seems like when a old farmer dies someone from New Jersey is quick to buy. About the only place you still can buy large tracts is out in West Texas.

The grazing ratio of N Texas and S Okla is about 2-3 acres per cow. That's figuring in w/ bermuda grass on sandy loam soil. I'm told out in Lubbock a cow needs 20 plus acres eating that scrub. Yikes!

My "Plan" post crash is to convert my herd to 100% organic( no steroids) and take the meat to the consumer directly vs the auction barn to be finished off with grain.
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In other words, it's a huge sh*t sandwich, and we're all gonna have to take a bite.-from Full Metal Jacket

Pops

In my scenario, the price of land and the general housing market is a critical element - along with the willingness of the MSM to begin investigating PO. I was talking to some folks here about land values and whether the corn market impacts down here.

They said naw. I said I sure am seeing lots of what once was pasture now planted to corn and wagered that more and more would go that way.

Then they said, well, yea I have seen that to.

So mix together ethanol driven farmland prices, climate change awareness (which perversely might open the door to PO awareness), rising fuel prices – so a lessening of exurbanite driven subdividing and upward pressure on farm prices, dropping house prices in town, retiring boomers looking for greener pastures, a possible recession or worse…

Crap, my Lucite ball is beginning to overheat.
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Bytesmiths

Pops

A bump for another kinda old thread...
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CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1395

Gen-Xer here - though an early one. I can only comment on how things are going around where I live, but here most of the small farmers are boomers. There are some, like me, who are younger, but most of them have more hobby farms than actually producing farms. Some would say that my own farmette is in that category - but not for lack of trying.

Many of the younger people who are here have bought rural property because they want to live in the country, have horses, etc. Not because they want to really farm. There are a few who are actively pursuing a small farm lifestyle, who produce goods, trade and sell, etc. But we are the minority.

Many younger people are here, though, because they are the children of those boomer small farmers and, whether they want to actively participate or not, they are gaining knowledge of the "family business" which will come in useful down the road. I, myself, am the fortunate recipient of a piece of land that was in our family for a couple generations. Without it, I would be in the much the same position as many other gen-Xers who would love to be in the country but can't afford the move. I think this group of "kids returning home" is a sizeable portion of the younger people who will be small farmers in the future. Perhaps those very same young people who will be helping out the older folks as referenced many times earlier in this thread.

Luckily, the boomers (and silents) here are more than willing to provide advice and guidance to those of us who are newbies and inexperienced.

Carlin and I are both in our 40's - though we're not boomers, we certainly can feel the difficulty of managing the work around here coming up already. We'll certainly be counting on our boys as time goes on to take over much of the manual labor. And then like Pops, I'll be sitting under a shade tree directing the work Smile

. (By then, hopefully we'll actually have large enough trees on this former pasture to sit under!)

Kathy

Pops

As mentioned elsewhere our Daughter’s family bought a little 10ac corner of or little place for cash – they are nearing 30.

Susan’s nephew is about to close on a 20 with a house and some outbuildings a couple miles away. He drives truck in CA and wants to keep making the bucks out there to get the place paid down as much as possible over the next year or two before moving. He and his GF may be close to 40.

Crap, I am only 50 - a mere pup!

Given a little initiative one can make a transition as long as they aren’t going by yesterdays model of modern farming.. It ain’t easy, but then again neither is paying off a flat screen TV on rotating credit.

Sorta like the movie said: Buy some land and the ideas will come.
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Ludi

You-all with young family members are fortunate! I'll be scraping along here as best I can, but, not probably able to make a living at it, beyond the barest subsistence.
Sad

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No original ideas are contained in this post.

CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1395

Ludi,
Until our boys arrived this summer, I was much in the same position as you are. I could very well see the day coming when I wouldn't be able to handle the work myself, and worried about what I would do then. Having someone to pass our farm (and our values and traditions) on to was certainly a big reason we started investigating adoption in the first place. Having an impact on the future generation through what we were able to pass on, as it were...

At any rate, before they got there, I was already making a point of our house being the place where younger people felt comfortable to just hang out. The children (mostly teenagers) of friends and other family members were (and still are) often at our house just to visit. Once in a while when I need some help, I still call on them.

Developing relationships with the youngsters in your area may well be an asset to you in the future (not to mention right now). There are still some teenagers out there who aren't afraid of a little work. You'd be surprised how much just offering a listening ear and a glass of tea is appreciated by kids who seem to be running constantly and have, at best, shallow superficial relationships with so many others. And, I've gotten as much out of my friendships with these young people as I hope they've gotten.

Kathy

Pops

A Bump in response to the Rich Homestead thread question...
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patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1504

A leading edge Boomer here, 62. Buying land wasn't easy when we did it in 1978. Inflation was taking off. We had to pull every trick we could think of to make it happen. Some of those were:
1) Sell out at a real estate peak in north Indiana where farm land was then $2,000/acre, and our 3 BR tract house went for $39,500. Then moved 200 miles south where farm land was $600 to $800/acre, and a house like we sold was going for $24,000 on a lot in town.

2) Buy acreage in rundown condition. A poor old house, with oil stove heat (no stove included). A 120 year old barn with termites and powder post beetles included at no extra charge. And fencing with leaning posts and sagging barbed wire. An old Allis Chalmers C tractor with a dead battery and cracked tires. All for only $24,000! Cheap, yes, but that was all it was worth. 45 acres, mostly steep hillside woods, with a wet-weather creek, 2 ponds, and about 5 acres of rocky bottom land cleared.

3) It was 40 miles to my job. That's why it was cheap. Cheap gas made this work, but limited my spare time to improve the place.

4) Kept my GM salaried job, with good pay and great insurance, by finagling a transfer from another plant.

5) A small inheritance paid off the mortgage and allowed us to build a new barn and get some dozer work done to solve the big problems.

6) We had bought and sold a couple previous homes to our advantage, that helped us accumulate some capital.

7) We lived cheap. While making morgage payments and raising kids on the farm, I combed junkyards, landfills, and auctions for the cheapest stuff I could find to improve the place. We heated with firewood, my wife baked our bread and canned food. She made the kids clothes and worked a job part of the time. I bought cheap cars and did all the work on them. I ran a part time business making furniture. I cut logs and had them sawed for lumber to repair the farm buildings. I tore down the barn and built another one myself. I made our woodstove out of steel plate cut from a junk RR gondola car and firebrick salvaged from the landfill.

8 We raised beef calves to sell, and hogs to butcher for ourselves, with extras to sell and pay for those we kept to eat. Raised a huge garden and a couple acres of corn for stock feed, shucked out by hand and stored in a crib built from junk lumber salvaged from the old barn.

It took about 16 hour work days to pull it off, ten years of that. I honestly don't see how a young person could do it at todays land prices and wage rates, with $4 gas and $5 diesel.

edit: I think it has always been tough to buy a farm. Today, that situation looks like it will be worse for a while with PO driving up prices. There may come a window of opportunity if one could preserve his capital through the coming economic contraction, then take advantage of a distressed property sale.
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SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 884

Patience. You're one of those guys that all of us wished lived next door!

I would never have my farm if it weren't partially willed to me. My dad and my aunt inherited it from my grandpa. My dad gave me his half and my aunt sold me her half. I lived in near poverty to get it paid for as fast as possible. It has been in our family for at least 5 generations. I'm the only one in living memory to take it back to being a farm again and not just land to rent out to the Roundup farmers.

The only way to get a farm these days outside of an inheritance is to get rich first. The farms here lately can be as much as a half million bucks for a hundred acres depending on the house and barns. I really don't know who will be the new small farmer since most of the land is in the hands of a relatively few big farmers.

ORCA

Pop, I would imagine one's location will have a lot to do with who the new small farmer will be.

Here in the central part of Virginia there still exists a lot of small family farms that might have been neglected somewhat as the heirs to the property sought better paying jobs elsewhere and only continue farming as a second job. The raise a few head of cattle and grew a few acreas of tobacco. I think improving economic opportunities for locally-grown produce and other farm products will draw some of these folks back to the farm full-time.

Other new farmers will be those who also recognize an improving means of earning a good living while also being your own boss. After all, shipping costs alone will spur restaurants and grocery stores to seek local supplies, as will individual consumers.

A recently phenomina that seems to be catching on regionally is farmers who sell subscriptions to individuals and/or families who share what the farmer has produced. It could include fresh vegetables each week, or milk, or even meat. One farmer might have only 50 subscriptions to sell while another with increased production might have several hundred.

Regardless where they come from, I do envision a resurgence in local agreculture because it will once again become a viable means to make a living and a life.
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oneplain1 · Tar Sands Joined: Nov 18, 2007 Posts: 54

That's exactly how one does it from scratch, Patience.

My story reads almost right on with yours. 2009 will be 20 years on my homestead, when I bought it, I lived 250 miles away. It had no electricity available, a 150 year old log cabin (mostly falling down), no barns to speak of, but is was 154 acres of dreams! I was a kid of 25 at the time, so I had plenty of energy to make it work, but I lived pretty low for quite awhile.

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1504

We no longer have the place. Had to sell out to stay alive through a major financial loss. Now, it is just my wife and I on a one acre lot (paid for, thankfully) in farm country where I started a farm repair shop after losing the auto industry job. At 62, we don't have what it takes to do it over again. So, we are doing what we can to cut energy use and prep for the future as best we can.

The big losses to me are 1) not enough ground for grain, or livestock, and 2) no woodlot. For those things, we will have to depend on trading repair skills to the local farmers.
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Local fix-it guy..

mcgowanjm · Tar Sands Joined: May 23, 2008 Posts: 63