Have you contemplated the farm life? Is it possible to make okay money with a small piece of land to grow corn, beans or onions? Is cattle too expensive?
Have you contemplated the farm life?
Have you contemplated the farm life? Is it possible to make okay money with a small piece of land to grow corn, beans or onions? Is cattle too expensive?
If you can find customers willing to pay for local produce at a higher price than costco/walmart then it can work.
You can also sell it for cattle food. I'm thinking how much land I would need to own to make a sustainable living
You can profit about $300/acre
Unless you are corporate or you have family, you won't get into any co-ops and you won't be able to sell any seed. You can buy all the land and equipment you want, and some are successful, but again unless you work for a corporate farm you're fricked.
>Is cattle too expensive?
Yes. Anymore you will maybe break even. Cattle farming is not sustainable in the United States anymore. It's all from South America these days.
>pay for local produce at a higher price
The profits generated from selling your own produce are usually just to fund the hobby and booze money. You still have to compete with people that have been around for years and you have to somehow make your produce stand out. People pay out the ass for garden tomatoes though.
>It's all from South America these days.
Good for me then, since I live in Brazil.
>It's all from South America these days.
>US the largest beef producer in the World
>12 million metric tons per year
>19% of the global supply
This dude isnt as knowledgable as he would like to think/
checked and he's new talking about smaller scale operations no shit we have corporate ranching on lock.
There's a lot of local farms where I live that grow seasonal stuff and rent the land to cattle farmers between seasons.
From what I've seen, most small farms need at least one person working a regular job to make ends meet.
if you already own the land without a mortgage, and have a lot of experience with farming/ranching, sure.
otherwise, stardew valley is as close as your'e going to get.
Do you have training and experience?
No. I could lease for a few years until I learn the basics
i'd start with a home garden and get a feel for it.
if you are unlucky enough to live in a dorm/apartment, see if you can rent an allotment first. leasing a plot of land from someone is going to be kind of pricey, and it will take you a few seasons at minimum to get the hang of it.
if you have the space maybe get a feel for setting up an automated irrigation system, knowing how to do that out of the gate will free up so much time for the myriad projects you'll find yourself needing to do down the line. labor saving is essential
do you have the space to build a small chicken coop right now?
Yeah, I do
okay, so start there?
grow some hobby crops and raise chickens.
see if you like it, and if you can make it work, scale up.
going all in right off the bat is much riskier and has actual repercussions if you fail/decide it's not the life for you.
Yes start small and get a feel for it. Find an existing farm and work as a farmhand while expressing interest for buying your own part later down the track. I bought the calves for cheap and sold them for a lot more later on but every couple of months I had to worm and drench them which doesn't come cheap, even if you buy the veterinary products directly and spent a few years learning how to do it properly. Plus cows don't just willingly stand there waiting to get jabbed or jump into the back of a truck by magic. Even the cheapest stockyard and race that sits on top of the ground will set you back ~20k, and the Cow Crush is an extra 20k on top of that if you truly care about your fleabags and need to treat pink eye or pick a stone out of their foot without getting your head kicked off
I'm living the farm life but I don't own the farm that I work on. You can do things like share-farming or share-cropping with other people where you rent the land but do whatever you want with it and normally get a house as part of the deal, but you need to weigh up the costs of the tractors and the implements and the fuel
>Is it possible to make okay money with a small piece of land to grow corn, beans or onions?
Corn/beans/onions no. You can't compete with commercial broad-acre farms and supermarkets. If you own the land yourself and are super-rural maybe, but you need to look at less common but high demand plants that grow in your area. I'm in Australia and grew a great crop of finger limes in my first year as a bit of an experiment and sold them for $30 a kilogram to the local publican who probably sold them for $50 a kilo to the his other chef friends who probably sold them for $100 a kilo to chinese tourists. It paid my farm rent but it was hard work
>Is cattle too expensive?
Cattle is the key here in australia. My boss/landlord has a small dairy with a milking herd of ~300 cows that have to get impregnated once a year to continue lactating. Hereford or angus bulls go in with the herd and 10 months later a little calf pops out, but if those calves aren't Fresian or Jersey or they're the dairy variety males they don't go back into the herd and I buy them for $50 each, and raise them to mow the lawn and I make friends with them. When they're a year old I sell them for $1800 each to the local stockyard
How much net profit do you make per year and how much do you work realistically a week ?
Bonus question, was this achievable without generational wealth ?
Super curious to know more and please be realistic, we re all anon here.
LOATHE farming with every cell in my body.
Hey frick you buddy.
he didn't say ranching anon chill out
post breasts
Cattle need acreage, so it's not that they are "expensive" exactly, you just need a lot of land which is usually not cheap. Ask around in your area to see how much a head of cattle needs for grazing to get an idea.
Cattle are expensive to buy, and land is expensive to buy. But you can with some experience lease land, and graze other peoples cattle for a flat rate or a weight gain contract to pay the bills and make a profit, while you establish yourself saving up for land, or capital stock. Ironically it often cost more to lease land than it would to pay a mortgage on it, but that way you don't have to convince the bank to give you millions. Just other farmers or livestock companies to give you stock, which also might be worth a million if you have a bit of scale. Those connections themselves are something of value that someone starting from scratch might not have but people like stock agents can help out of course for a commission. Might not be what people imagine as quiet farm life doing your own shit when you have a whole lot of guys on your case about their stock, and land owners on your case about maintenance etc. Jumping into farming is jumping into running a business and its one where you need to be a jack of all trades. And be comfortable working off on your own a lot with no one else there to fix something that went wrong. Like any business I'd say if you are thinking of starting one, maybe go work in the field first or get educated some other way, until you know you aren't going to wiener it up..
Full grown cattle are expensive, but why would you buy something ready to slaughter? Calves are $500-$750, and I don't see that as expensive considering you can get up to $5000 when grown. The entry price for farmland on the other hand is getting to $10-20k an acre around here. The land is the up front cost to start.
Of course you don't buy ready to kill. It's fair expensive when you are talking about raising a good number of them. Not too bad to raise one or two. But say 500 you're talking about a pretty big chunk of money to stock a place. And I don't know where the hell you are getting 5 grand for a grown one, please share I'd like to send some as well kek. Obviously land is a huge investment but I'm just pointing out it's not the first one you need to make, if you can organize yourself a good cash flow, land becomes something which pays for itself, and you can do it on someone else's land.
You can do it. But you need to find a niche. Like hardneck garlic, micro greens, sweet corn, cut flowers, shallots, berries, lavender, sweet onions.
You're not going to make any money when dent corn is $6.50/bushel and basedbeans are $10.70/bushel. And you only have five acres.
You can raise couple head of cattle on a few acres. Hopefully you have enough land for them to graze. Otherwise you'll be buying hay and feed. Also you'll need to sell the cows locally to make any money. People will pay top dollar for organic grass fed beef.
I have cousins that raise cattle, and I live out in the country. Across the creek is a large farm and undeveloped forest. It is very quiet and peaceful, but I have internet and a PC and all that you know. I will tell you what I know.
Agriculture is seasonal work, so some days it is very little work, some days you are busy all day long. It's hard work but it's nice to be out in nature all the time, and owner-operator households can do well, even small family farms. As long as you are growing what people need. The median owner-operator farming household income is about $90k, depending on the crop or animal cultivated and the success of the farm. It is essentially a small business, but you are feeding society with food it needs to live.
Grain is the foundation of civilization, and the most widely grown grain in the USA and in the world is corn or maize. It's grown subsidized as a monocrop, does not make a ton of profit, but the government subsidizes the crop because people need the grain to live and sustain society. As a monocrop, it's grown on a very large scale, tons of acres and expensive equipment. Same with cattle, a "small" cattle ranch is like 200 acres and 200 head of cattle.
If you are some sort of homesteader or small family farmer, as opposed to a large commercial farm, you may have to specialize to survive or thrive. This is typical, cash crops or heirloom crops or anything you can make a living on without thousands of acres or millions of dollars like a giant factory farming food corporation. Like a small business, you will need to plan it out ahead of time, and you can also work with organizations relevant to your produce. For example, if you raise pigs, you will need to buy piglets from another farmer, or to go to another lettuce farmer for example to get good information on the best practices and seeds.
This is the traditional way to farm, you can sustain your own farm and even work the farm as a family.
The food you grow is sold to grocers, farmer's markets, some sell produce directly online.
Traditionally, with cattle, it is auctioned off at a cattle action or sold to a processor. The auctions have people bidding on cattle and an auctioneer calling out prices and counting offers for the sale.
Large commodity crops like corn and wheat are sold on a large scale into commodity markets, like the Chicago commodity futures exchange and the Midwest corn belt. For large scale production, live cattle and pork are also traded on commodity markets, which lets farmers buy futures contracts to guarantee a fair price ahead of time.
You should really have a realistic plan and understanding of how you will sell or market your produce, as well as grow and transport it. It's not rocket science, but a farm should be well planned and requires a lot of hard work to succeed.
>Traditionally, with cattle, it is auctioned off at a cattle auction or sold to a processor.
Not all crops or livestock have the same economy of scale either. A small herb farm can return the same profit as a large monocrop corn farm, as herbs just command a higher price by weight. Things like herbs, cut flowers, heirloom crops, good for small scale growing. Smaller animals like pigs and sheep are also more economic for smaller farms, you can run like 30 hogs per acre which is solid money. Roses are another crop that is good for family farmers.
wtf did any of that have to do with what he said about cattle
>Is it possible to make okay money with a small piece of land to grow corn, beans or onions?
No.
Market tampering and foreign competition pretty much price out all modern farmers. The only way you can survive is with government subsidies, but even then, you're basically making as much as a school teacher does after deducting expenses.
Physically, it is one of the most rewarding jobs available, but the ratio from income to labor is completely fricked.
>Market tampering and foreign competition pretty much price out all modern farmers
Somehow food remains on the plate despite farmers being price takers not makers.
>The only way you can survive is with government subsidies
The most efficient haven't had them for 40 years and export 90% of what they make..
>Somehow food remains on the plate despite farmers being price takers not makers.
Because the government is literally keeping them alive through subsidies.
I was a farmer for three years. If you actually knew how low the profit margins were you would want to have a nice day.
I could've literally made more money working in a Chinese sweatshop for $2.50/hr.
>The most efficient haven't had them for 40 years and export 90% of what they make.
For every single acre of produce you grow a season, the Chinese are growing multiple hectares of that same crop. When I was in business I was competing with corporations that had flooded the marketplace with so much product that it had deflated the price by over 1000%
Seriously, it's not worth the trouble.
These things can happen. Like I said farmers are price takers. When I talk about a place where there hasn't been subsidies for so long I'm talking about NZ. Initially everything went to Britain. Then Korean war happened, and wool was like gold. NZ was the richest country in the world per capita for a time there.
Britain joined European EEC and that market was lost for a time. Then the subsidies went away too. It literally cost more to have a sheep killed then the meat was worth. There was a protest where some folks herded a bunch of sheep into the middle of a city and cut their throats there to show how worthless they were.
Prices these days are a lot better than that. Ironically with you winging about the chinese, a lot of that is to do with their demand for meat and milk. No one said it was an easy life, mate. But it can be profitable. It remains the largest export earner for the country and more or less was the only one during covid bullshit. A lot of those old guys who stayed on through the shit times, are sitting on very valuable pieces of land.
It's possible with heirloom corn, beans, and onions. Some farmers grow heirloom crops on less than an acre and still get by, just because they command such a good price at farmers markets and grocers. If it wasn't possible, all these family farmers here would not exist and would have lost their farms. People just adapt to survive.
I wanna homestead but knowing how my body just randomly shuts down cause of my disabilities, I'd definitely need to hire help
And also I think I wanna be an ag pilot doing crop dusting, but I might not even get past the starting gate cause of the aforementioned disability
But yeah generally as with anything, start small, start cheap, don't drop a paycheck on something you might learn that you hate
it's very hard to sustain yourself while paying all the bullshit taxes the government robs us with and you also need to be a rich to start if you didn't inherit anything
You can work up to a manager job that might be 80k a year and then when you have the skills and gear to manage a place you can think about leasing one and might make double that, or might make frick all
this post is delusional
You been out of it for a while?
you will never make 80k
most engineers that spent 200k on their degrees and don't make that much
Talking from NZ you can go work on a dairy farm and earn 70k just like that if you can handle getting your ass out of bed to go milk cows at 4am every morning. Not even managing. There's probably 1000 places available across the sector and they are about to go into calving. And a path to get into your own eventually is save enough to buy a herd of cows and then sharemilk on someone elses land. I'm in drystock which a little different, people will value also things like a good team of dogs, horse riding experience etc on the big places. Fencing skills, tractor driving. And managing to look at the market and stock the place in a profitable way. Tbh we are probably talking in different currencies or something, 70k NZ is about 44k US currently.
>It's how those Japanese ranchers make so much using such a limited amount of space
Those japanese ranchers also own a big company in new zealand, Maybe they don't have enough space at all. Will give you 3 dollars a kilo weight gain for raising wagyu from 100kgs up to about 550kgs before they go into feedlots. Through carrfields. But they might send you some real crap calves, to start with. Wagyus are a bit wild too, you will have to weigh them every month, and they might try to kill you while you are doing it. But do them right and they might be putting on a kilo a day. A few hundred of those and you do the math.
My mom is buying 10 acres of nice land to build a mini farm and asked me to help build it/maintain it while she travels, in exchange for putting my name on the will. Any tips? We plan on raising hogs, chickens, and goats for now
I should clarify this is not for profit, but self sustenance
Use chicken poop for fertilizers. Learn charcuterie and maybe homebrewing. That's what I'd do
Is she flighty? What's the chance of her changing her will sometime down the line. Why not just put you on the deed.
Meant to say deed, my bad
Yeah I’m gonna dabble in a few artisanal hobbies, would be fun to get into blacksmithing. It’s right next to an Amish community so if I can get cool with them I’m sure I can learn some craft/trade with them
And frick the Amish girls
Amish girls gotta be undercover bawds
Depends on area, Lancaster county PA amish aren't any different from the world in their attitudes.
What area friend, I'm near Holmes county Ohio
Northern NY, west of Ogdensburg
Oh wow I really forget there's amish that far north anymore.
NY is a terrible place to homestead though friend.
How so?
Get the soil tested.
Many farms, especially old farms, used fertilizer containing uranium and other heavy metals in the past.
This is bad for a few reasons. The first is that many farms use private, untreated wells for water, and are contaminated because of the heavy metals left over by past farmers.
The second reason is that some crops are known as Hyperaccumulators.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperaccumulator
Unlike other crops, these plants absorb heavy metals and concentrate them in their flesh and fruit. Consuming them can make you severely and irrevocably ill.
Some Hyperaccumulators can be valuable for this reason, however. Hemp for example was useful in purifying the soil of nuclear contaminants near Chernobyl.
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8912475/
Incidentally, this is the reason why cannabis makes people stupid. Many growers don't take care to make sure the soil they are using is free from heavy metals.
So crop sales are a total loss, but I'm curious on what the overhead is on sheep for wool production. Is it a huge upfront investment to get into the game with breeds that produce quality wool?
Sheep are based
Wool isn't worth shit (0.7-3.5 usd per kilo, depending on quality). You can use the money to cover sanitary costs though
I own of the Corriedale race, we work on genetics to make them better
I don't know what to tell you op. We're basically fricked and get outcompeted by factory farming in every way. Almost every farmer around me has to get a second job just to get by. A lot just stop farming altogether. My own family farm is just profitable because of tourism
>Have you contemplated the farm life?
Yeah ive considered it, I've been a farm hand most of my working life. One day I hope to own my own land.
> Is it possible to make okay money with a small piece of land
It may be possible if you market garden and grow heirloom crops and find reliable buyers like restaurants or sell at markets, if you grow commodity crops and cant distinguish yourself from the big boys then no. Most farmers have a second job so consider it a calling rather then a career.
>Is cattle too expensive?
They can be, but they are an investment that compounds very quickly when you breed them.
I already have family that raises cattle. Everything depends really on what you are growing, and whether you are an agriculturist or pastoral farmer.
Cattle requires a good deal of land, about an acre per cow, except for factory farms or some indoor farms. Although, factory farms are usually run by faceless giant food corporations and not families.
Something like corn, beans, or onions? Corn is grown as a "monocrop" like wheat, it is the most widely grown grain in the world. The low cost monsanto grain yields little proit per acre, but the government subsidizes corn production to feed our civilization.
As a family farmer or small farmer, that is, a revenue under $300k (before costs), it's wise to go with crops or animals that can provide a living using less resources.
For example, you can raise roughly 30 pigs on a single acre paddock.
Picrel is a hoop barn, which is an indoor structure for whatever purpose, including raising animals or keeping them safe from the elements. This is similar to how Wagyu are raised, and you can fit like 250 pigs in a decent hoop barn or equivalent space.
Each pig would yield about 100 to 500 net profit normally, so let's estimate the average as 300, giving you $9k after six months for 30 pigs on a paddock or $75k in your hoop barn. If you run two batches of hogs per year, that's $18k per acre of open pasture or $150k per hoop barn per year.
However, with the pasture, your costs are just leasing or owning the land. A few acres of pigs or the equivalent yield per acre would be enough to live on, with low costs like feed and water. A hoop barn with straw, water, feed, even ceiling fans or what have you, that's an initial investment and an ongoing cost.
>A few acres of pigs or the equivalent yield per acre would be enough to live on
Say you have 10 acres.
You need a farm plan, like a business plan.
1 acre: Garden
1 acre: Greenhouse
3 acres: Pigs
5 acres: Sheep/goats/catfish/chives/hops/hunting/fishing/dog sanctuary/etc
Garden for food, greenhouse for rare and valuable shrimp breeding, as well as medicinal fungus, and 5 acres for something productive, or just leave the land to preserve it for hunting and fishing and to protect the environment.
Hunting and fishing is productive, and you if you respect the land, the fish and game will always grow back and eat the local wildlife.
>Hunting and fishing is productive, and if you respect the land, the fish and game will always grow back and eat the local wildlife.
Down here, some people just own wild land with a house on it, then sell the game they catch on that land. It's called a game ranch, and people pay well for wild caught venison, wild boar, wild caught fish, and so on.
You see along the right there is where you'd pour out your feed, they also get some open air and sunshine. You can take them outside as well to get fresh air on some pasture, but they are eating the feed. The better the feed, the better the end product. The lower the stress of the animal throughout its life, the higher grade the end product as well.
So, for a small farmer, getting a higher quality product using less resources is a means to survive. Like doing traditional open range grass fed cattle, or a high quality angus. It's how a lot of Navajo ranchers are surviving.
Something I learned from other ranchers:
Happy, low stress livestock = high grade meat
It's how those Japanese ranchers make so much using such a limited amount of space.
>1 acre per cow
yeah in heaven maybe, for the rest of us its a lot more.
We can live the farm life for billions of years in heaven if we want. And heaven is real because NDEs are real and prove that there is an afterlife and that we are eternal and will go to heaven unconditionally when we die.
Here is a very persuasive argument for why NDEs are real:
It emphasizes that NDErs are representative of the population as a whole, and when people go deep into the NDE, they all become convinced. As this article points out:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/202204/does-afterlife-obviously-exist
>"Among those with the deepest experiences 100 percent came away agreeing with the statement, "An afterlife definitely exists"."
Since NDErs are representative of the population as a whole, and they are all convinced, then 100% of the population become convinced that there is an afterlife when they have a sufficiently deep NDE themselves. When you dream and wake up, you instantly realize that life is more real than your dreams. When you have an NDE, the same thing is happening, but on a higher level, as you immediately realize that life is the deep dream and the NDE world is the undeniably real world by comparison.
Or as one person quoted in pic related summarized their NDE:
>"As my soul left my body, I found myself floating in a swirling ocean of multi-colored light. At the end, I could see and feel an even brighter light pulling me toward it, and as it shined on me, I felt indescribable happiness. I remembered everything about eternity - knowing, that we had always existed, and that all of us are family. Then old friends and loved ones surrounded me, and I knew without a doubt I was home, and that I was so loved."
Needless to say, even ultraskeptical neuroscientists are convinced by really deep NDEs.
it depends on where you live
/thread
Good thing you can move
Currently working on a small vegetable and fruit organic farm, the owners started it not long ago and they seem to get by but it's a struggle.
The land is awesome and the lifestyle can be pretty good if you do things right but it's pretty hard work and the money will never be comparable to other activities.
For most people a decent paid job that doesn't destroy your body is a better option, then you can get a small plot of land to entertain yourself and grow some veggies for eating.