Woods clearing

Clearing woods for farming has always bothered me and to be honest I worked for a company that would contract such work. So i have pushed woods into piles for burning. Huge waste in my opinion as everything is burned.Never made sense to me from a business perspective but ag land is $10K while woods is $5k acre now.

I’m pushing 50 now and I can remember a lot of 10 to 20 acre woods that are now gone. Two 80 acre and one 240 acre woods gone for farming too. Most to just “ clean up” an 80😡😡😡. Heaven forbid auto steer needs to adjust. I even grew up farming but this is getting out of control here.

Maybe sour grapes for me as my parents neighbor lost his farm which I hunted for 36 years and Dad probably for 50. My wife and daughters took all their deer from there too. One of big guy’s son ( 23 years old) bought the land and the woods is coming down. Good people but dang they hate trees.

Nothing I can do about it but this one is really bothering me. 1:00AM and I’m thinking about this; trying to come up with some way to prevent this. Not a chance...

Here the issue is moreso urban sprawl and invasive buckthorn taking out many nice wood lots.

In my area, I haven't noticed many cases of what you are referring to. That's interesting.

Corn makes oxygen too. Concrete and blacktop don't. Nothin hotter than concrete and blacktop but cows cause global warming, lol!

just the opposite here small 40-120 acre farms going back to woods , it only takes a few years an they are woods,

sounds like ya had a good run of free hunting but times change and what the people payin the bills do with the land should be none of your concern.

I'd have to agree with this. We lost some family ground on one side with the passing of my late grandmother. Was some of the best bobcat trapping and there were always bucks hiding there when everything around it got pushed hard. She didn't want any tussles between the family so what was left went for auction and cash split three ways. Made life easier. First thing they did was take out every tree, bush, or pile they could find. It's all farm ground now. I had a chance to bid on it but didn't. So I have accepted I have no right to question what they do with it.

Except they use it to grow more subsidized corn. That irritates me a little.

Trees don't pay taxes or land payments! Unless it is leased for $$$ for hunting. I understand the feelings though. I prefer woods myself. We are in the process of cleaning up the family farm now. Sold the house we grew up in, a young farmer is moving it onto a new basement and remodeling it for his family home. All the buildings down, trees cleared, and it will be farmed by my Brother In Law. The pond and an area around it will be preserved.

A few years ago my Brother In Law was at home and a vehicle with New York plates came down the driveway. They got out and started talking about seeking a place for deer hunting. Brother In Law told them to get back in their car and leave. They pulled out their checkbook and waved it in the air. Today they are good friends, they have access to a 2-story farm house, he leaves a few rows of crops standing for the deer, they leave a Suburban in Nebraska for Brother In Law and my Sister to drive around.
I don't know what they pay, but they certainly got his attention. Money talks.

They pay with lumber, maple syrup, paw paws, persimmons,, mushrooms, roots, and ginseng.

Not many hedge rows left in Henry County here. All piled and burned. Does wonders for clean air, especially with the truck tires at the bottom of the pile to keep things going,
I people try that in NYS there will be a trooper or conservation officer there within 20 minutes.

What 3togo says is absolutely true!

don't lump everyone in 1 group.i've removed and paid to have taken care of,well over 100 tires since starting my restoration project.

The best way to stop it, is buy it.

Wooded land here goes for double what tillable does. 15-18000 an acre is standard for straight hunting land. Leasing is out of sight too.

Sure I agree they now own the ground and they bought it to farm it.

But does it make sense to allow woods to be cleared while our tax dollars are spent on subsidies or CRP or CREP or any other government program paying folks not to farm ground? Don’t believe it is a little amount of cash either.

when you drive from couth central WI into north central IL you often notice 3 things other than the road signs changing

1 every field is 2x the size or better

2 almost no field rows at all ,some drainage ditches but not much for fence lines or narrow wooded spaces all cut down to fit more corn in.

3. houses spread much further apart and often just the house at the farm not a farm with 2-3 houses with it like in WI where many farms are multi generational

we are starting to see a little more of the clearing of fence rows and such here but not to the extent we see to the south

I didn't think there was any money in farming, lol!

^^^^^

What makes no sense is with the government set aside land is if you don’t plant trees and the come up naturally you have to destroy them, but on some ground they’ll pay to plant trees, and they say what they are doing is returning it to the natural state. I think some timber land is better crop ground than is farmed today but I do think that the trees should be used for something even if its just mulch.

Theres not. Thats one of the reasons for the clearing. You can't afford to have land that is not producing at least something. On the flip side if prices are good and there is a healthy profit to be made, then thats another reason to clear it. There is a valid reason to maximize production either way.

It will stay this way until such time that land prices and property taxes are low enough that you can afford to own it without it paying its own way.

A lot of farms used to be family owned where the owners took a big interest in deer hunting. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Plus, the taxes are way higher on wooded land than tillable land.