13 ms·

I always laugh when someone who has never worked on a farm talks about buying one. Most farming is hard work, much harder than an office job. And most small far

I always laugh when someone who has never worked on a farm talks about buying one. Most farming is hard work, much harder than an office job. And most small farms do not make much money, especially if you don't know what you're doing. If you're thinking about it go get a job on one first before you buy anything.

R0b0t1 6y ago
What they're probably thinking of is buying land, which you can lease or pay to have tended. Getting into this market is understandably more difficult; if it was easy free money everybody'd be doing it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  Or I see this a lot from people who live in an apartment with no yard or balcony who really just want a small garden.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  A lot of land within a few hours of the Bay Area is pretty expensive because it's very productive, it's often bought with Bay Area money, and people pay a premium so they can "have some land." Oh, and you're competing with people with low taxes because of Prop. 13. With land priced like that, especially when you lease it out, it's even harder to make money. If there's a house on the property and it's halfway close to a town, you might make more leasing the house than the property. At least when people get into buying apartment buildings they're not competing with someone who will pay a premium so they have room for a horse and can watch the sunset over their field.
hardwaregeek 6y ago
It's up there with buying a restaurant as poor business decisions go.
- pueblito 6y ago
  I dunno about that, I'm in agriculture and I'm doing just fine
grecy 6y ago
Certainly it is a lot of work - bu if you're growing food for yourself and spend your days outside, why do you need to make much money?
- onetimemanytime 6y ago
  Food in itself cost relatively in USA too. So with $400 a month you can eat all you want and spend your days outside doing nothing. But you need more than $400 a month, right? Same with farmers and people living in villages.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  In the US, you need decent cashflow to pay for healthcare. You probably also need to save for natural disasters or injuries that disable you. And if you have kids to support, even more costs.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    You need those cashflows to pay for healthcare anywhere. In Europe you get more subsidies if you can't pay your own, but modern healthcare is expensive and only possible in societies where the average person has a large cashflow. (Yes healthcare is more expensive in the US than similar levels of care in Europe, but it isn't the order of magnitude more that most people think)
    - grecy 6y ago
      I've been making roughly $10k a year for the last 4 years (so in fact below the tax free threshold), and I've got perfectly good healthcare in Canada. Same in Australia.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        You have good healthcare because someone else is subsidizing your healthcare. If you were contributing your fair share to society you would have to earn more than that to live. There are many reasons that a society may choose to subsidize someone who isn't contributing their fair share. I agree with some of those reasons, not others.
dehrmann 6y ago
There's the other big that gardeners (especially home covid gardeners) forget: almost nothing you want to grow on your "coupla acres" has enough calories to sustain you. Potatoes are probably the only exception. Everything else--beans, wheat, corn--is a pain to grow and process, especially at a small scale.
- mgiampapa 6y ago
  The sweet spot is when you have passions about products, expensive things or impractical crops to scale... We have a homestead with acreage in Hawaii. Chickens and eggs are zero effort. We don't even need to feed them, just collect the eggs. We grow heirloom tomatoes in the greenhouse because they are crazy expensive to ship from the mainland and we love them. Likewise, we also grow a lot of white pineapples because they are amazing, but not commercially viable to ship... There are lots of small scale / high margin areas to work in, you just need to explore and find them. You won't build a business empire, but you can find a lot of satisfaction.
  - gabereiser 6y ago
    To think if the whole community could do this you could have more sustainability and variety and setup local farmers markets to shop local-to-table. Granted in Hawaii you have finite land to work with, but remember engineering is hard at work to figure out vertical eco-friendly hydroponic farming to increase those yields per acre at the expense of up front investment in the infrastructure. I want to emphasize the last bit though about “building an empire”. It depends on what your metric is. You can be rich and be broke. You can be poor but wealthy. The empire here would be in community and not in money. Giving back by selling your produce, locally, and helping the community. That, is satisfaction. On top of the satisfaction you have from growing your own food of course.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      > To think if the whole community could do this you could have more sustainability and variety and setup local farmers markets to shop local-to-table. I go to a farmers' market in the Bay Area. It draws farmers from a 100-150 mile radius. Being California, you get produce from a lot of different climates; some things need a cool coastal climate, some need the heat of the central valley. You also see the season of crops move. Things usually start in the south where it's a bit warmer, and the season (and vendors carrying) that crop moves north over the next few months. The community approach can really only get you some amount of diversity in produce that does well in your area, and maybe a bit from the soil type. Talk to anyone who's grown squash will tell you there's a month where their one plant has more squash than they know what to do with. The problem is everyone in the community has the same squash surplus at the same time. I appreciate the idea, I just think that produce production will always tent towards hobbyists and professionals because of economies of scale.
gabereiser 6y ago
I can confirm the hard work part. Up before the sun, down long after it leaves. It’s not a job, it’s a life. I worked on a farm for a summer when I was 19. I’m still ripped from it, you’ll be physically fit in no time. If you want to buy a farm for the purpose of profit, you’ll fail immediately. If you want to buy a farm to learn to farm (profits will come when you can actually grow in bulk) then dive in. There’s also “alternative” farms that maximize vertical space vs acreage. To reiterate the last sentence, go get a job on a farm for watermelon season and ask yourself if you can do that everyday for 20+ years. (Kennedy Farms in Stony Creek, VA if you’re curious).
altdatathrow 6y ago
Farming is easy money [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Funny video. He didn't mention getting the land, barns and equipment for free too. Just inherit and profit!
dirktheman 6y ago
I know some farmers and they all have one thing in common: they work around the clock, 7 days a week. No days off or vacations. Their farms might be worth millions, but it's also both their home and their job. Also, a lot of people don't get that a farm (anything other than subsistence farming) is a business. It requires careful long term planning, crop rotation, dealing with buyers, collectives, auctions, risk mitigation and pricing. The farmers I know are all extremely proficient with spreadsheet software and most of them attended the Agricultural University two towns from here. Farmers are often regarded as a bit simplistic country boys, but the opposite is true. I don't envy them.
- jaclaz 6y ago
  In Italy we have an old saying: "La terra è bassa." (translates to "the earth is low" implying that to get food out of it you have to kneel and bend a lot, i.e. it is hard, hard, backbreaking work) With animals, it is (IMHO) even harder, another saying (Tuscany) goes like: "Le bestie non conoscono feste comandate" (translates to "animals know nothing about holidays", it is a 7 day a week (from dawn to sunset) 365 days a year job)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- arethuza 6y ago
  I've known a lot of farmers over the years and they always struck me as some of the most hard nosed and astute businessmen I've ever met. Edit: Having done a bit of both (and a lot of family in both areas) I'd rather be a fisherman than a farmer and I really don't want to be a fisherman!
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Having done both, I'd rather be a farmer than a fisherman in my community. Imagine catching fish with your bare hands or a flimsy net - yep, that hard.
    - arethuza 6y ago
brnt 6y ago
I don't know how things are in your jurisdiction, but here in Europe making a profit on farming just isn't possible. This sector lives and dies by subsidies. You're going to have a cash crop or market the hell out of your product, both seem opposite to the goal of starting the farm in the first place.
- holoduke 6y ago
  Depends on which farm sector. Part of my family is into flowers. I can tell you that flowers are like gold. Almost every flower farmer in our region is loaded. Lowest tier for farming are traditional crops. You need lots of acres and good machines to get efficient en break-even. Only a few manage, but most do not. I would probably focus on farm tech. Automated greenhouses growing tomatoes, cucumbers etc is for example big business. If done right you can be 10-50 times more profitable per square feet than a outside potato field. 100k isn't enough to start something like that. More in the line of 5-10m start capital needed. I
  - avar 6y ago
    Your other comments reveal you're living in The Netherlands. The farming sector there is massively subsidized both via EU and local funds. Now during COVID-19 the state is bankrolling up to 70% of the revenue of the horticulture industry[1]. And that's before you get into all the indirect subsidies like zoning, fuel subsidies for industrial use etc. that are largely aimed at subsidizing farmers. 1. https://www.arc2020.eu/flower-power-commission-somehow-approves-dutch-pillage-of-pillar-2/ https://www.arc2020.eu/flower-power-commission-somehow-appro...
- adwww 6y ago
  My family make more profit renting an old workers cottage on the farm as an Airbnb than they get revenue from the entire organic diary operation.
  - telesilla 6y ago
    Without the dairy operation I'd suspect they'd have less land, less beauty, less reason to live where they are - the workers cottage wouldn't be so charming if it were on the edge of a lifestyle block 15 minutes from the city. Don't discount the value of their investment!
m463 6y ago
remember to marry eva gabor before you purchase.
DavidPeiffer 6y ago
As a friend of mine put it, the shear breadth of knowledge you need to break even is astounding. Depending on scale and focus area, they'll include: * Accounting (cost of production, allocating overhead expenses, cash flow analysis, financing terms and outcomes) * Efficiency calculations and cost benefit analysis for equipment comparison * Buying and selling commodities contracts * Marketing your product (locking in the price optimally) * Biology for dealing with animals and anything you plant * Ever changing government subsidies and regulations * Maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting of equipment. This helps keep you productive when the weather is good and the vendor techs are busy. Welding is really handy. If you mess a couple of those up to a moderate degree, you'll probably lose gobs of money. Do it too bad or for too long and you'll be visiting my dad or brother for a bankruptcy.
snarf21 6y ago
Exactly this. Been there, done that. I always joke that the only people who want to buy a farm are people who've never worked on one. I also joke to people that farming is really just a part-time job. Everyday you get to pick which 12 hours you are going to work!
- sethammons 6y ago
  “[I work part time.] There are huge chunks of time.. at night.. where I’m just asleep. For hours. It’s ridiculous.”
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
My way was to buy 80 acres and rent out half. The local farmer gets to amortize his equipment over a larger crop; I pay the property tax with the income (when there is any income).
pragmatic 6y ago
So true. However... ... all my grandparents were spry into their 80s and lived to their 90s. There was a an article awhile back that the most longed lived or healthy groups were New Jersey Asian females and South Dakota male farmers. I’ve been at a desk for 20 years and I’m almost crippled. The difference is the variety of work. Fix fence in the morning, do the manual stuff before it gets too hot. In the afternoon get in the ACed tractor (if you’re lucky). Get back in the house at 10pm. Maybe not till age midnight if the combine breaks, etc. Lots of physical activity, lots of fresh veggies and a bit of fruit seems to be the recipe for a long healthy life. Wealth not likely or guaranteed. For better or worse that life is economically impossible now.

R0b0t1 6y ago

What they're probably thinking of is buying land, which you can lease or pay to have tended. Getting into this market is understandably more difficult; if it was easy free money everybody'd be doing it.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Or I see this a lot from people who live in an apartment with no yard or balcony who really just want a small garden.
dehrmann 6y ago
A lot of land within a few hours of the Bay Area is pretty expensive because it's very productive, it's often bought with Bay Area money, and people pay a premium so they can "have some land." Oh, and you're competing with people with low taxes because of Prop. 13. With land priced like that, especially when you lease it out, it's even harder to make money. If there's a house on the property and it's halfway close to a town, you might make more leasing the house than the property. At least when people get into buying apartment buildings they're not competing with someone who will pay a premium so they have room for a horse and can watch the sunset over their field.

hardwaregeek 6y ago

It's up there with buying a restaurant as poor business decisions go.

pueblito 6y ago
I dunno about that, I'm in agriculture and I'm doing just fine

grecy 6y ago

Certainly it is a lot of work - bu if you're growing food for yourself and spend your days outside, why do you need to make much money?

onetimemanytime 6y ago
Food in itself cost relatively in USA too. So with $400 a month you can eat all you want and spend your days outside doing nothing. But you need more than $400 a month, right? Same with farmers and people living in villages.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
In the US, you need decent cashflow to pay for healthcare. You probably also need to save for natural disasters or injuries that disable you. And if you have kids to support, even more costs.
- bluGill 6y ago
  You need those cashflows to pay for healthcare anywhere. In Europe you get more subsidies if you can't pay your own, but modern healthcare is expensive and only possible in societies where the average person has a large cashflow. (Yes healthcare is more expensive in the US than similar levels of care in Europe, but it isn't the order of magnitude more that most people think)
  - grecy 6y ago
    I've been making roughly $10k a year for the last 4 years (so in fact below the tax free threshold), and I've got perfectly good healthcare in Canada. Same in Australia.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      You have good healthcare because someone else is subsidizing your healthcare. If you were contributing your fair share to society you would have to earn more than that to live. There are many reasons that a society may choose to subsidize someone who isn't contributing their fair share. I agree with some of those reasons, not others.

dehrmann 6y ago

There's the other big that gardeners (especially home covid gardeners) forget: almost nothing you want to grow on your "coupla acres" has enough calories to sustain you. Potatoes are probably the only exception. Everything else--beans, wheat, corn--is a pain to grow and process, especially at a small scale.

mgiampapa 6y ago
The sweet spot is when you have passions about products, expensive things or impractical crops to scale... We have a homestead with acreage in Hawaii. Chickens and eggs are zero effort. We don't even need to feed them, just collect the eggs. We grow heirloom tomatoes in the greenhouse because they are crazy expensive to ship from the mainland and we love them. Likewise, we also grow a lot of white pineapples because they are amazing, but not commercially viable to ship... There are lots of small scale / high margin areas to work in, you just need to explore and find them. You won't build a business empire, but you can find a lot of satisfaction.
- gabereiser 6y ago
  To think if the whole community could do this you could have more sustainability and variety and setup local farmers markets to shop local-to-table. Granted in Hawaii you have finite land to work with, but remember engineering is hard at work to figure out vertical eco-friendly hydroponic farming to increase those yields per acre at the expense of up front investment in the infrastructure. I want to emphasize the last bit though about “building an empire”. It depends on what your metric is. You can be rich and be broke. You can be poor but wealthy. The empire here would be in community and not in money. Giving back by selling your produce, locally, and helping the community. That, is satisfaction. On top of the satisfaction you have from growing your own food of course.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    > To think if the whole community could do this you could have more sustainability and variety and setup local farmers markets to shop local-to-table. I go to a farmers' market in the Bay Area. It draws farmers from a 100-150 mile radius. Being California, you get produce from a lot of different climates; some things need a cool coastal climate, some need the heat of the central valley. You also see the season of crops move. Things usually start in the south where it's a bit warmer, and the season (and vendors carrying) that crop moves north over the next few months. The community approach can really only get you some amount of diversity in produce that does well in your area, and maybe a bit from the soil type. Talk to anyone who's grown squash will tell you there's a month where their one plant has more squash than they know what to do with. The problem is everyone in the community has the same squash surplus at the same time. I appreciate the idea, I just think that produce production will always tent towards hobbyists and professionals because of economies of scale.

gabereiser 6y ago

I can confirm the hard work part. Up before the sun, down long after it leaves. It’s not a job, it’s a life. I worked on a farm for a summer when I was 19. I’m still ripped from it, you’ll be physically fit in no time. If you want to buy a farm for the purpose of profit, you’ll fail immediately. If you want to buy a farm to learn to farm (profits will come when you can actually grow in bulk) then dive in. There’s also “alternative” farms that maximize vertical space vs acreage. To reiterate the last sentence, go get a job on a farm for watermelon season and ask yourself if you can do that everyday for 20+ years. (Kennedy Farms in Stony Creek, VA if you’re curious).

altdatathrow 6y ago

Farming is easy money [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE

redis_mlc 6y ago
Funny video. He didn't mention getting the land, barns and equipment for free too. Just inherit and profit!

dirktheman 6y ago

I know some farmers and they all have one thing in common: they work around the clock, 7 days a week. No days off or vacations. Their farms might be worth millions, but it's also both their home and their job. Also, a lot of people don't get that a farm (anything other than subsistence farming) is a business. It requires careful long term planning, crop rotation, dealing with buyers, collectives, auctions, risk mitigation and pricing. The farmers I know are all extremely proficient with spreadsheet software and most of them attended the Agricultural University two towns from here. Farmers are often regarded as a bit simplistic country boys, but the opposite is true. I don't envy them.

jaclaz 6y ago
In Italy we have an old saying: "La terra è bassa." (translates to "the earth is low" implying that to get food out of it you have to kneel and bend a lot, i.e. it is hard, hard, backbreaking work) With animals, it is (IMHO) even harder, another saying (Tuscany) goes like: "Le bestie non conoscono feste comandate" (translates to "animals know nothing about holidays", it is a 7 day a week (from dawn to sunset) 365 days a year job)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
arethuza 6y ago
I've known a lot of farmers over the years and they always struck me as some of the most hard nosed and astute businessmen I've ever met. Edit: Having done a bit of both (and a lot of family in both areas) I'd rather be a fisherman than a farmer and I really don't want to be a fisherman!
- fakedang 6y ago
  Having done both, I'd rather be a farmer than a fisherman in my community. Imagine catching fish with your bare hands or a flimsy net - yep, that hard.
  - arethuza 6y ago

brnt 6y ago

I don't know how things are in your jurisdiction, but here in Europe making a profit on farming just isn't possible. This sector lives and dies by subsidies. You're going to have a cash crop or market the hell out of your product, both seem opposite to the goal of starting the farm in the first place.

holoduke 6y ago
Depends on which farm sector. Part of my family is into flowers. I can tell you that flowers are like gold. Almost every flower farmer in our region is loaded. Lowest tier for farming are traditional crops. You need lots of acres and good machines to get efficient en break-even. Only a few manage, but most do not. I would probably focus on farm tech. Automated greenhouses growing tomatoes, cucumbers etc is for example big business. If done right you can be 10-50 times more profitable per square feet than a outside potato field. 100k isn't enough to start something like that. More in the line of 5-10m start capital needed. I
- avar 6y ago
  Your other comments reveal you're living in The Netherlands. The farming sector there is massively subsidized both via EU and local funds. Now during COVID-19 the state is bankrolling up to 70% of the revenue of the horticulture industry[1]. And that's before you get into all the indirect subsidies like zoning, fuel subsidies for industrial use etc. that are largely aimed at subsidizing farmers. 1. https://www.arc2020.eu/flower-power-commission-somehow-approves-dutch-pillage-of-pillar-2/ https://www.arc2020.eu/flower-power-commission-somehow-appro...
adwww 6y ago
My family make more profit renting an old workers cottage on the farm as an Airbnb than they get revenue from the entire organic diary operation.
- telesilla 6y ago
  Without the dairy operation I'd suspect they'd have less land, less beauty, less reason to live where they are - the workers cottage wouldn't be so charming if it were on the edge of a lifestyle block 15 minutes from the city. Don't discount the value of their investment!

m463 6y ago

remember to marry eva gabor before you purchase.

DavidPeiffer 6y ago

As a friend of mine put it, the shear breadth of knowledge you need to break even is astounding. Depending on scale and focus area, they'll include: * Accounting (cost of production, allocating overhead expenses, cash flow analysis, financing terms and outcomes) * Efficiency calculations and cost benefit analysis for equipment comparison * Buying and selling commodities contracts * Marketing your product (locking in the price optimally) * Biology for dealing with animals and anything you plant * Ever changing government subsidies and regulations * Maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting of equipment. This helps keep you productive when the weather is good and the vendor techs are busy. Welding is really handy. If you mess a couple of those up to a moderate degree, you'll probably lose gobs of money. Do it too bad or for too long and you'll be visiting my dad or brother for a bankruptcy.

snarf21 6y ago

Exactly this. Been there, done that. I always joke that the only people who want to buy a farm are people who've never worked on one. I also joke to people that farming is really just a part-time job. Everyday you get to pick which 12 hours you are going to work!

sethammons 6y ago
“[I work part time.] There are huge chunks of time.. at night.. where I’m just asleep. For hours. It’s ridiculous.”

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

My way was to buy 80 acres and rent out half. The local farmer gets to amortize his equipment over a larger crop; I pay the property tax with the income (when there is any income).

pragmatic 6y ago

So true. However... ... all my grandparents were spry into their 80s and lived to their 90s. There was a an article awhile back that the most longed lived or healthy groups were New Jersey Asian females and South Dakota male farmers. I’ve been at a desk for 20 years and I’m almost crippled. The difference is the variety of work. Fix fence in the morning, do the manual stuff before it gets too hot. In the afternoon get in the ACed tractor (if you’re lucky). Get back in the house at 10pm. Maybe not till age midnight if the combine breaks, etc. Lots of physical activity, lots of fresh veggies and a bit of fruit seems to be the recipe for a long healthy life. Wealth not likely or guaranteed. For better or worse that life is economically impossible now.