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Farms are just businesses and nothing about them makes them inherently better to own than other businesses. Instead of putting all your money into a single undi

Farms are just businesses and nothing about them makes them inherently better to own than other businesses. Instead of putting all your money into a single undiversified business that requires work to manually manage just put it in an index fund.

jrockway 4y ago
Yeah. There are basically companies trading on the stock market that have thought of pretty much every 1 sentence business plan ("buy a farm, the fed can't print farms"). Buying a total stock market fund basically gives you exposure to these ideas, and in general, a lot of the ideas do end up working out, so the collective basket increases in price. If one of the ideas is terrible but 10 of them are good, you still win. If you pick an individual idea and don't actively drive it to completion, then it could be one of the bad ones, and you lose everything. (If you're going to be actively involved, the equation changes. You might say you're better at programming than anyone you know, and at talking to users, and at selling to large companies. Great! You should start a software company and it will no doubt do better than companies that are made up of people that are only average at those things. The market has a way of cutting down your ego, though. As for farms, there are lots of people that inherit farms and were born and raised on the farm, but they ain't billionaires. You can hedge against inflation all you want, but all it takes is a swarm of locusts to erase all of your gains on one hot summer day. There is a lot of equipment you need to buy, and hard manual labor you need to do to make the farm more than a park in the middle of nowhere. Everyone knows that people need food, and food grows on farms, and they are there to take a % of your profits. We'll give you a loan on that combine for 8% interest. We'll sell you the best seeds money can buy, for a price. We'll pick up your harvest and drop it off at the market, for a % cut. We'll give you insurance against a freak tornado for a low monthly fee. We'll pay workers compensation when one of your employees decides to dig a hole with a stick of dynamite and blows their hands off. Before you know it, your inflation hedge was siphoned off by products and services. Just sayin', why be the farmer when you can loan someone the farm equipment for a monthly fee?)
justinzollars 4y ago
How much money did you lose in the last year?
- esoterica 4y ago
  Just because your farm is not publicly traded and marked to market every day does not mean the value cannot go down. A rising rate environment is going to drive all asset values down, including farm businesses. It’s not only stocks that went down last year.
  - justinzollars 4y ago
    It doesn't matter if it goes up or down - or left or right. Its an answer to "how do I park 700k". It produces income, and in an inflationary environment commodity prices go up. So rents will go up. Last year was a horrible year for homes values, but was it for Iowa farms? I'll leave that to you.

jrockway 4y ago

Yeah. There are basically companies trading on the stock market that have thought of pretty much every 1 sentence business plan ("buy a farm, the fed can't print farms"). Buying a total stock market fund basically gives you exposure to these ideas, and in general, a lot of the ideas do end up working out, so the collective basket increases in price. If one of the ideas is terrible but 10 of them are good, you still win. If you pick an individual idea and don't actively drive it to completion, then it could be one of the bad ones, and you lose everything. (If you're going to be actively involved, the equation changes. You might say you're better at programming than anyone you know, and at talking to users, and at selling to large companies. Great! You should start a software company and it will no doubt do better than companies that are made up of people that are only average at those things. The market has a way of cutting down your ego, though. As for farms, there are lots of people that inherit farms and were born and raised on the farm, but they ain't billionaires. You can hedge against inflation all you want, but all it takes is a swarm of locusts to erase all of your gains on one hot summer day. There is a lot of equipment you need to buy, and hard manual labor you need to do to make the farm more than a park in the middle of nowhere. Everyone knows that people need food, and food grows on farms, and they are there to take a % of your profits. We'll give you a loan on that combine for 8% interest. We'll sell you the best seeds money can buy, for a price. We'll pick up your harvest and drop it off at the market, for a % cut. We'll give you insurance against a freak tornado for a low monthly fee. We'll pay workers compensation when one of your employees decides to dig a hole with a stick of dynamite and blows their hands off. Before you know it, your inflation hedge was siphoned off by products and services. Just sayin', why be the farmer when you can loan someone the farm equipment for a monthly fee?)

justinzollars 4y ago

How much money did you lose in the last year?

esoterica 4y ago
Just because your farm is not publicly traded and marked to market every day does not mean the value cannot go down. A rising rate environment is going to drive all asset values down, including farm businesses. It’s not only stocks that went down last year.
- justinzollars 4y ago
  It doesn't matter if it goes up or down - or left or right. Its an answer to "how do I park 700k". It produces income, and in an inflationary environment commodity prices go up. So rents will go up. Last year was a horrible year for homes values, but was it for Iowa farms? I'll leave that to you.