I’ve been thinking about this as the agriculture area of the economy is looking like with crops being produced below cost of production, the 1920’s with over production and drought is happening a lot and with the rest of the economy being stressed I’m seeing some similarities and I’m getting nervous. Is anyone else feeling this or is my worry unwarranted.

Restaurants might be going back to serving marsh rabbit(muskrat) on the menu again

"As the United States recovered from the Great Depression a strong market for fur trimmed cloth coats created a demand for skunk, with pelts doubling in price into the early 1940's. Previous to the 1950's it was sold under different names including Alaskan sable, and American Sable."

My Dad, born in June of1909, started farming in 1932. He put 720 acres together by breaking work horses, hand picking corn. raising cattle, hogs and chickens, and selling eggs and cream.

He also trapped skunks. Unfortunately He had 50 put up pelts stolen when he went to town to sell cream and eggs, and buy a few groceries.

He passed away a few days before Christmas in 1990




Charlie

There is a great book about this subject and how history repeats itself and how to prepare and invest.

https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-War-Wisdom-Barton-Biggs/dp/0470474793

50 skunks in 1932 would be about 80 dollars.
But the all black skunks were in style back then...

One thing with grain farming is there are so many safety nets that are in place few fail . Take a look at the shiny equipment , overpriced land , high rent's , beautiful shops , nice home's , vacation home's , toy's . The list goes on and on . Not making it on just selling grain produced . All the different programs , disaster payments , and the big one - federal crop insurance is a big money maker

they Dyed them and sheared them and sold them as American Sable

My dad, born in 1910 rode the rails during the depression. Visited every state of the lower 48 and even ventured into Mexico in '31 with his traveling partner Floyd. Some of his "road" stories were written up in the Readers Digest.

I would suggest a farm consultant,,,, if you think things are going wrong.
We did 231 over 4 farms in two different areas. All dry land. No way you go broke on that….
I was a bumper year and with the ethanol plants,,,,,, it is not what it used to be….
Farmers need to figure something new out….

I work on a grain farm and my boss is pretty open with me about the profits/expenses on the farm. I don’t get to hear the final profit or loss (wouldn’t expect to) but even though 2024 wasn’t a great year here he definitely didn’t lose money. Everything made money this year, corn always has the narrowest profit margin but beans consistently make money and wheat did better this year than usual. Yields were down some here on account of having almost zero rain from June til September and a very wet spring, winter wheat was the exception, yield was close to double what we normally expect to see with that wet and warm spring. Only guys that are going broke farming are the guys trying to expand too much too fast, had a 5th generation farm do that here on account of that and mismanagement. I can’t speak to the produce side of things but grain farmers are doing just fine and there’s safety nets in place if they don’t.

There is so much money locally trying to buy farmland. Everyone who made money in another business seems to be a "hobby farmer" suddenly. We have guys showing up with 4 million dollars in equipment to harvest 40 acre fields that are nothing but sand that they pay $5,000-10,000 a acre for. Some farmers will go broke, dairy already have but the big guys are waiting in the wings to buy the Land and atleast locally they ain't depending on the farm to make money to do it.

Like the 80's Too much farm expansion = loss of farm

Big dairies around here prefer sandy soils over heavier loam....they can get in the fields earlier on wet years. They have the crops down to a science and its not uncommon to see 10-12 ft corn in sandy soils. They know what the ground needs and an endless supply of liquid poo......

A Huge 3 shift Dairy went Out near here.

they mostly rented crop land for Alfalfa

There’s a pretty big area here in northern iowa that didn’t get rain late and a lot of ground was at least 30 to 40 bushel off the average, as far as putting a crop in below cost I’m talking next year, here fertilizer and chemicals are higher than last year and corn is just over 4 dollars, the biggest loss is in beans next year with the price of P&K, as to the federal crop theory I believe the farmer pays from 62 percent up in 22 and it maybe more now, I’ve known two John Deere has got the machinery and there’s banks not willing to loan for lack of income next year.

Beans look to be a profit loser in the US for at least another year or more. The only thing that can change that much is poor weather for crops in Brazil and Argentina. Corn is benefiting from an increase in exports and ethanol used in fuel. There was a 200 million bushel decline in carryover recently that is keeping the price above $4, but $4 dollar corn is not a big profit as there still is a lot of corn in storage accross the Mid West and other countries are planting more corn as well. Wheat is being kept low as Russia is selling cheap to create monies to fight their war. They are having weather issues with their new crop so there could be some changes next year.
Land prices are starting to decline in many areas but are still extremely high when one considers the value of the crops grown these days. Ditto cash rents and once you lose the land you rent you may never get it back.
Every one talks about China but Mexico and Canada are major ag trading partners and where the trade issues go that could determine prices at home some as well. Europe is not a major corn buyer but have bought more lately and the tariff issue could impact that as those nations are much more likely to implement their own costs toward us as they have long histories of subsidizing agriculture, similar to what we do here.
It will take 3 years to increase our beef cow herd so shortages of fat cattle will continue for the next 2-3 years. Beef prices are so high that dairy farmers are culling herds very heavily to take advantage of those prices as well as breeding over half their herd to beef semen to get beef calves worth 600-1000 dollars and creating a heifer replacement shortage.
Grains are hurting more than livestock now and have been for over two years. The wild card could well be Avian flu and impacting poultry, dairy and humans. These things are mutating so fast that there is now concern for pork as well. High concentration of livestock can put production at risk. We have not even considered the potential labor factors that could come into play also.
With interest rates where they are now and so many lower risk places for bankers and lenders to extend credit I would be looking at ag loans as higher risk, higher turn over rates and less desirable. Loaning $800 K for a combine that goes over even 2K of acres per year at 200 bushel per acre does not pencil out very well in todays agriculture market.

Bryce

For the first time in quite a few years I can say the pigs here haven’t been dying like flies, but that could change pretty quick, I heard there was a big kill off of chickens in California because of bird flu, a guy here that feeds colored calves out is empty as his buyer can’t find calves to fill him up.

Just announced last week , some big payments going out to grain farmer's first qtr of 25

Farm ground here is still high. Not as high as ground near KC getting developed but high enough to convince me farming is lucrative