Start-Up Farming

OK, here it goes. I have an idea...

Edited by morton(pa) - 27 Oct 2011 at 6:12pm

I use to always want to be a farmer growing up......deep down inside I still want to be one but its hard to get started...I have 45 acres that was my Grandpa's.....I've decided when I have the funds to get the equipment I'm just going to grow and cut hay off of it.

That should be some decent side money after the equipment costs are paid off. Plus it will make me feel great that I am putting my Grandpa's land to good use.....currently I just keep it mowed.

I started farmimg like that back 20 yrs ago and from someone that has been there and done that it is a HUGE uphill battle.You will never generate enough money to make 30 -100 acres of crops a viable endeavor. You may have fun at it , learn alot, if you have kids it will be great for them , but as  extra cash or as a part time job do NOT do it.Farming can consume as much money as it can get its hands on, there is alway someting needing repair improvement etc, it never ends.Do not read all these ag mags about the wonderful life of farming with these high  crop prices, and believe it. Farming is harder and worse to turn a profit in now than ever.. land prices ,inputs ,repair parts have all gone higher that all the extra crop prices will give you is more gross money to work with but less net.I loved to farm, and worked full time, did custom work all to get started, I was a city kid gone country, put alot of my life on hold to get this thing going, I do not regret it, but knowing what I know know about the business of farming and the people you have to deal with, I couldnt encourage it, with a clear conscience.If you are going to go into it, keep your investment smart, as in buy things you can sell and still get your money back on, for example a D-17 S 3-4, for 30-40 acres thats alot of power and are easy to resell if you decide it isnt working, do not buy delapedated old junk and expect to get a crop in and out with the break downs and costs that are going to kill you. For get trying to set the neighborhood ablaze with a brand new cabed 4x4 brand X tractor it will break you. If your going to farm small scale enjoy yourself, and what ever you do DO NOT GET IN DEBT, the fun will quickly vanish.I have seen more than my share of guys that wanted to farm a couple of acres thinking it is going to turn money, which it will, but it always turns out the same they keep investing more and more and more, way past what the amount of land theyhave can support.The other poster thats talking about needing a combine, if your going to farm 50 60 acres, thats great, but dont waste your money on an old all crop, its a great little machine to play with etc, but it wasnt made to handle todays yields, so your going to crawl, plus the bins are so small your going to be spending half your time unloading. If its really important to have your own machine, go find a F2-3 4400JD size machine, I just seen a nice F2 sell in MN for 3500 with heads, your going to be money and frustration ahead, trust me. When I started I picked corn so I wouldnt have the expence of drying and my first picker was a 1r New Idea, it worked great, but it was like dying a slow death, plus when you worked out you didnt have alot of available time to be picking corn, and a 1r picker and 2 wagons all alone is a big job, just to find out later when I bought a combine that the picker was actully losing way more corn and soaking up so much more time it was actully costing more than the combine, or the custom hire we did a few times. Just my 2 cents worth guys, but I have done it so this is expierence talking.

I would suggest looking at your neighboring farms, you might find an operation that would trade labor for planting and / or harvesting and give you access to a better planter or combine than you could otherwise afford. Plus you can get advice and benefit from their experience. Who knows you might find an older farmer  who can be a mentor as well.

I would be at least a millionaire today if I hadn't had farming in my veins.lol JP  

Boy, Kinda discouraging advise!  Here's my, not quite as discouraging thoughts.  I would find someone to till and plant the place to hay, either alfalfa, grass or a mix.  Find a good tractor (the D17 is a good choice), but anything in good shape from the 1960's will get you by for a few years.  Buy a haybine, rake and baler and make hay.  I would think $10,000 or less would put you in the haying business.  Out here in Colorado we use New Holland bale wagons, either pull type or SP, but to get started a couple flat bed wagons will work.  If you have friends or siblings to help you can bale right onto the wagon.  Hay isn't as romantic as rows of corn or beans but I really think it is more profitable.  If it gets hailed out or rained on after cutting, at least you will have another cutting or two.  They way hay prices are, I really think you can do quite well.  Plus, when you get a little experience under your belt, I suspect you will be getting calls from other land owners wanting their hay put up on small patches.  Lots of times people even give you the hay just for cutting it and getting it off their land so the place looks nice.  You do need to find a shed or barn to store it in, both to keep it dry and to keep someone from hauling it away if it is stacked in the field.  Tarps always seem to leak and make more of a mess then no tarp at all.  I started doing hay at 13 with an AC C and mid mount mower and old MH steel wheel rake.  Had the hay baled by an older gentleman with a Ford baler.  Bought a MF #10 baler a year or two later for $400 and thought I was on top of the world.  Moved up to a CA then to a David Brown 1200 (ok, not my best choice) and a MF 124 baler.  Now have a Kubota M110, Hesston 1345 hydroswing diskbine, Hesston 4600 baler and NH 1049 bale wagon.  It was 49 years ago that the adventure started and I'm still enjoying it.  Good luck.  Don't let the naysayers get you down!

A lot of your input costs are going to depend on the  condition of your dirt. If you want to do corn, you can sneak a crop in on old sod for a year, but next year you better plan on something else or a ton of money to build the dirt up. Look at other crops with a lesser input cost than corn. The ph has gotta be good to make your fertilizer work its best. No till is good way to keep input costs down also, either renting equipment or paying someone to plant for you. I have been renting a small no till drill last couple years for my buckwheat and this coming year I am going to try no tilling oats. Keep in mind you try something and it doesn't work, try something different. What works for me or others may not work for your situation. Biggest thing is don't be afraid to ask questions, don't go ape chit buying equipment, you can do a lot with a three plow tractor to start out with. I bought the family farm in 2008, working with my Super MTA I did 28 acres of oats and 6 acres of buckwheat last year with a 3 bottom drag plow and a 10' disk. Just takes a tad longer, now I got the 185 and am looking for a 4 bottom plow, and I still have all the old stuff we have had for years, but am upgrading slowly.  At the end of the day it's your money so spend it wisely and good luck.

Here's a solid number for you: 1/3. I was a city kid, with no farming knowledge or experience, so the farming here on the old family farm is done by a real farmer who was raised in it. We share expenses and income. I get 1/3 of the cost and the crops, and he gets 2/3. I guesstimate the cultivated acreage is forty to fifty acres. Most years my 1/3 is just about enough to pay the property taxes. That won't be the case this year. Drought and heat made for sorry wheat and sorrier soy beans, so I'll be spending some non-farm dough on the taxes.

When I multiply my farm income by two and see what Phillip makes off my place, it's obvious he has to farm a whole lot of places to make a living at it. But given the high cost of land, you might want to look at renting land and paying with a share of the crops. The advantage of course, is that how much you pay depends on how much there is. You're not faced with paying a set amount even in a bad year.

Here's how I look at it today. I went on advise from family and friends to not get into farming. I've had friends that have done farming and some made it and some didn't. I know one thing, if you don't at least try to do something you love to do you'll always regret it. Today at 40 plus years of age I finally am farming part time. I would rather be at full time but it's much harder to break in today than 20 years ago. 20 years ago I had access to more land and the huge mega farms weren't in the area yet. Today it's nearly impossible to rent land once it's in the hands of the few mega farms. Kiss it goodbye.

Edited by Lonn - 28 Oct 2011 at 9:15am

I farmed for 11 years and went in debt and rented ground and raised livestock, that was in the 70's and early 80's.  I did not make it and had to sell out when my debt rolled into the 18% plus interest rates.  I would try it again if I was younger.  I learned a lot nad even though we sold out my kids and wife loved the farm.  Start slow and pay as you go and enjoy it.  If you do it right you can make it at least part time. Don't let anyone talk you out of trying.  Listen to others and learn.  The worst you can do is fail and have to sell out.  From what I've learned failing is not a sin and we learn a lot failing and suceed ing.  Jim

Keep overhead low. That means old. Expect to get good at fixing, you need a shop big enough to put your main equipment in (tractor, combine) and spend the winter making them like new. This pays big dividends as a. you will have fairly reliable machines and b. you will have assets to sell if the whole thing doesnt work out. Good luck, Trev.

Farming is the only business in the world were you buy almost everything RETAIL, and sell almost everything WHOLESALE, and can control NONE of the costs???  

Been there. Done that.

Tried to be organic on 26 acres of Iowa black dirt with marsh on two sides. Organic may be cheap for purchased inputs, but enough manure to grow corn and certified organic seed isn't cheap. Then you put in FUEL and HOURs because the organic way for row crops takes two or three passes with the rotary hoe and two or three passes minimum with the row crop cultivator. Over a decade of trying (after I kept the place in alfalfa a few years to build up the organic matter) I found few springs where I could get in the field for those 4 to 6 passes. Rotary hoeing doesn't work in wet soil and doesn't work once the weeds are out of the ground. It needs a moderately dry crust so shoving chunks of crust around breaks off the weeds under ground. Row crop cultivating doesn't work when the soil is wet or sod. It depends on taking a relatively dry crust and pulverizing it while cutting off weeds to make a dry soil mulch to discourage weeds. In Iowa the same spring rains that upset cultivating also interfere with making the first crop hay and there's usually way more hay in that first cutting than the rest of the year put together. Its hard on the profit to loose that first cutting. So long as you don't leave the wet first cutting as a ribbon from the field cultivator, it doesn't hurt the alfalfa to cut it wet and let it rot. The earth worms and other organisms will make it disappear.

Horse owners think they like alfalfa, but its NOT what their horses need. To keep the horses from bloating they have to ration it feeding each critter just a couple flakes from the small square bale, then the horse has enough protein but needs another bale of roughage ot fill its innards and eats the wood of the stall trying to ease the hunger pangs. Then some horse types have bad bank accounts after they reject half the hay (but don't return it) for being dusty. I let a couple years of alfalfa stay in the field rather than give it away. It was good for the ground.

I generally hired high schoolers for stacking hay on the hay racks. Wrestlers and ball players liked the exercise and worked hard. I paid over minimum wage. Contact the school coaches.

This year fertilizer is going to be a huge investment and you can't grow row crops without it. While CBOT prices are way up, so are fertilizer prices along with seed.

You don't grow good crops with third class cheap seed, but there are sellers of seed that will try to sell you junk. They make money on it, you won't.

A 4400 vintage combine will take as much maintenance cost annually replacing rotted belts, hoses, and worn out battery and bearings as hiring 30 acres of custom combining in my opinion. Plus an IH rotary just does a better job of combining.

Conventional till with plowing, disking, field cultivating, planting, hoeing, cultivating works, but count the passes across the field, figureing two or three disk passes, and two or three hoe and cultivator passes. Lots of TIME and FUEL, no matter what the tractor. You can lose a lot of crop in seconds from "cultivator blight." Seems like the crops cut easier than the weeds and while the weeds will grow back the crop doesn't.

Then I went notill. Saved immensly on passes, had to beef up the planter with trash whippers and fertilizer injection apparatus. With my own sprayer except for the chemicals needing excessive personal protection equipment and an applicator's license it worked except for one thing. SPRING! Those same wet springs that hindered cultivation made the ground covered with straw or corn stalks slow to warm up and dry enough for planting. In Iowa corn produces better when planted in April and beans in early May. I've planted many a crop in mid May and my last beans (2008) in mid June because it was that late to get the ground warm enough for bean germination. Then I had to go around wet spots, went back a week later and the wet spots were still too wet but I tried to plant them anyway. My burndown worked great but lambsquarter was up about 3" by mid July so I made another spray pass and found patches I'd gone around and patches that I had planted but that had drowned out. So I got some short season beans shipped in and planted. I figured on ground cover at a minimum. At harvest riding the hired custom combiner, I found some of the mid July planted beans had drowned out too, and walking the field I found them more mature than my longer season beans, but with buckshot or smaller beans. But the field was clean from only three sprayer passes, one of which was hired. Spraying for aphids was vital that year, when I found aphids I found too many to count, but I had already contracted an insecticide spray and a fungicide spray and called in the contract sprayer quickly. You can't wait a week to spray aphids when their population is high and growing rapidly. The neighbors didn't spray and lost 1/3 their bean crop. The fungicide may not have done much but it did keep the stalks green and the rotary combine rumbled a lot but didn't plug.

Now my farm is being strip tilled on a 50/50 crop share lease. I get some input on fertilizer which I pay half (along with seed and herbicide). Strip  till equipment isn't practical on my scale alone, but my tenant covers a few thousand acres and wears it hard. He doesn't OWN a combine, but for the past 15 years has leased one every year. Cuts his cost of ownership, gets him new machinery every year or two, and repairs are simple. One phone call. Also lets him deduct the lease cost as a direct annual expense, no capitalization or depreciation to spread the cost over years.

Strip till gets a strip of ground bare for drying and warming in the spring, but leaves lots of corn stover (no beans in the present operation, they don't "pay the rent.") to support the machinery and the earthworms and critters leave the ground practically bare by harvest.

Buying ground at the end of a farm crisis period when land prices were down has helped me to pay off the ground long ago and makes me a lot more money today. Today's land prices will probably go down in the next decade when the financial markets make investing in them more attractive than investing in land. And when the over extended farmers starting the past half decade go bust. The high commodity prices are driven more by speculative investment funds than market fundamentals of supply and demand. When the investement funds quit making money, they will put their money other places and let commodities go back to fundamentals of supply and demand.

There's another farming item, marketing. I learned its not profitable to grow the world's best crop if there's no LOCAL market for it. 25 or 30 acres of corn and beans, around here, its 4 miles to the elevator that buys them year round, but they don't buy oats there, have to haul outs 8 or 20 miles and then they prefer heavier oats than I ever raised as an alfalfa nurse crop. Wheat, there's no market within 100 miles. Milo and sorghum, not even in 100 miles. There are farmer's markets but few households are prepared to work with raw grains (no flour mills in most kitchens) and growing vegetables is more labor intensive than selling vegetables which is hugely labor intensive.

Point is, to some extent all these options work, some better than others. None work when the only tractor is down for a major overhaul, and the profit on the small patch that year goes to fix the tractor. Marketing is as important as planting the crop, but you can't market it all until you know what you have harvested and you don't have it harvested until its in the bin and all the hail storms and hurricanes have passed.

Its good exercise, keeps you out of the bars, and can make money in good years even on the small patches. You get lots of practice fixing stuff and chasing parts. I'm nearly 70 and I'm enjoying watching the tenant figure out the crops and fertilization while I travel and surf.

Gerald J.

By reading these posts it sounds like Farming is all about corn,beans,hay, wheat excetera. In my old age I supplement my SS with growing vegetables. Just a few acres growing vegetables makes a pretty decent profit per acre if you have a local market for what you grow. Right now I have enough Squash, Peppers and Eggplant and Green Shelled Pinkeye Peas and sweet potatoes gathered and ready for the Saturday morning local farmers market to gross over $600 in about 3 hours. I still keep my Ag exemption too.

...heres how it is.. i would love to do nothing but farm... and i attempted to give it ago for close to 10 years... had upwards of 30 head of cattle and a couple horses did my own hay and bought the corn... as iam young and had to start from scratch rent a barn the land buy used equipment.... did alot with old equipment but the problem is if it involves farming and animals its gonna cost..it is a 24/7/365 job even if you just crop farm always something to do... you will make some money but when things go bad they go bad!!...  at the moment i have 6 beefers 3 horses 2 goats and some chickens and turkeys bale up my hay and thats it...not making much money aliilte here and alittle there its fun and i love it...and its good for the kids to be around... but just remember you won't get rich u have to love to farm to do it cause even a small operation takes lots of time and money... just buy nice used equipment if you do