If farming is such a good gig, go buy all the equipment, some land, all the inputs and start farmin. You’ll see

The farmers in our area that are doine well are 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th generation farms and have build equity and leverage for 75-150 years. T say one can go out and buy 200 acres today and stock it with cows, machinery, equipment and feed supply shows that many don't understand the process to be able to pay 12k per acre to expand in todays world. Having worked with farmers from 1975 to to 2016, I was able to work with farmers on both ends of the spectrum and yes some are very profitable and many of those have been profitable for several generations. Margins in todays Ag economy are very slim and thus we see the expansion of those with leverage to do so, and they can become more profitable. With the high cost of health care, familly living, education, saving for retirement etc. it makes smaller farms with lower revenues hard to sustain even if they can produce a product at a lower cost then many of the larger scale operations.

Bryce

Well said Bryce. 4th generation farmer here

Trying to wrap up corn harvest this evening, lost the transmission in an International grain truck. Always something. Neighbor farmer will lend us a truck to finish

People see all the fancy equipment and make a lot of assumptions. You know what they don't see? They don't see the bank note that is owed on all that shinny equipment.

Well they may have a bank note but it has to be paid off plus interest.

Many of the large farms that are growing around here and expanding don't really plan on getting out of debt. They learn and have learned how to manage debt and also which investments have the best returns on their investments. Also many are getting funds from non ag sources where the REAL money is at and those individuals, firms or investment groups can benefit greatly from the tax write offs from depreciation etc. as many of those investors are in the 30 something plus tax brackets. It is easy for many to see a new shiney combine or tractor and think that someone is really rich, but it tells me they know very little about where the real billions are at.

Bryce

drive around in the country and when you see a big fancy house worth 3 to 4 times more than all the surrounding houses with black top driveways, ponds out in the front yard, brand new vehicles parked in front, well you found a poor poor farmer.

Nah you found a lucky farmer. And the harder he works the luckier he gets !

And the farmer pays the large majority of taxes to fund bond issues that everybody gets to vote on. A person who has never worked and owns nothing can vote for the farmer to pay more taxes.

I did. Doesn't mean I suddenly support welfare just because I'm on the receiving end

With the attitude that a lot of people have on here about farmers; they must for conscience sake only trap on their own land or government land that is kept up by the tax payer.
Next time they go to ask a farmer for permission to hunt, trap and/or fish I just bet they tell the farmer upfront their opinion of him. Bad old farmer.

No one is making broad, personal attacks against farmers even though a couple of you are trying to imagine that.

Doesn't change the fact some huge subsidies are involved. Kept up by the taxpayer.

Not in Minn. my son in law owns 390 acres, half open and I owned a restaurant in a small town in bad location. I paid 3 times in tax that he paid.

People are good at defending policies that benefit them. At the same time, many of these people who are receiving subsidies are also loud cheerleaders in the tariff war with the Canadian dairy industry because of their “unfair subsidies “ lol
I’m not really sure how this makes any sense but in this social media world here we are. “Subsidies are soooo unfair, but here’s my hand out for the subsidy made just for me.”

There is a chance you know that some of the people here commenting know a fair bit about how things work on the farm. I mean, I for example grew up on one and have a father that is a small farmer with about 1000 tillable acres put to wheat, canola ands lentils each year. Having insight to how things work isn’t always “an attitude”. It is nice to be able to make decent size purchases in dad’s name ( zero turn mower etc) to save a tax. Knowing that type of benefit and seeing that it is possibly unfair to the average Joe doesn’t automatically translate to an attitude about farmers.

I’ve worked on farms and been around farmers my whole life and none of them are poor. But I am sick of hearing of how bad they got it and how there barely making it. Farmers pay very little in taxes on there ground compared to anyone else. They also get all kinds of tax breaks. They also pay less for there vehicle insurance. There also allowed to put everything they own such as campers, boats, atv.etc all on there farm insurance so it’s a lot cheaper for them. If it rains too much they get money from the government, if it rains too little they get money, if they have a poor crop they get money. I know farmers that get checks from the government left and right and they flat out tell you they don’t even know what there all for they just cash them and go.

It’s extremely hard to become a farmer now unless you’re already rich with the prices of land. But when your the 3rd or 4th or 5th or 6th or whatever generation farmer and you inherit millions of dollars worth of land your already rich. My opinion you have nothing to complain about. That’s literally like have millions in a savings account that gets bigger every year.

They all got there hand out for the government to give them money all while sitting on millions of dollars worth of land.

If farming is such a bad gig why don’t they just quit and go get a factory job. But they don’t, they just like to complain like everyone else about there job

One thing for sure I've never seen a idle piece of farm ground.if someone retires there's 10 farmers knocking on the door either wanting to buy or rent the land.its sad but I've had people tell me that neighbors have asked about the land while going thru the line at a funeral of a loved one.

why can't new small farmers have a chance at making a go of it? because 68% of the subsidies go to the top 10% of the farmers.
https://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=54031
Pilgrims pride is a poultry company, since 1995 they have been awarded 26 million in federal farm subsidies. look up your area in the link above and see how much the covid scamdemic benefitted the large farms in your area.