Swallowing Your Pride - Can Family Farms Still Afford to Be Split Up?

[vvalk]

When Hutterites split they share resources like one big colony for years until the new colony is big enough to run on its own. Absolutely no comparison to family farms that break/split up.
Hopper not sure what you are trying to say since what you write is very hard to understand. What I said is that as soon as you hae to buy out the equity in your farm from siblings( and this can include a divorce, we went through this) you essentially loose a generation trying to do this. Never said you stop farming, you just spin your wheels.
Just saying that in GENERAL if you want to split up farms because siblings can't get along you will have a very hard time being a competitive, expanding farm. If you can work out getting along I believe you will have a much strionger entitiy. Would much rather have half of a great farm them 100% ownership a farm trying to stay afloat because I needed to be the boss.

[ado089]

I don't think lamnd should ever be split off to non farming sibblings. It makes alot more sense from a tax and sustainability perspective to help the farming child to buy the land from the older generation, like a rent to own type set up and divy up cash at the end of the day. At least that way if down the road no one wants to farm anymore you're not paying 125 years of capital gains on the land and in the meantime the integrety of the farm is maintained. Joint ventures can be useful tool in the meantime for those that can't always play nice with their idiot little brother or stubborn old man. And for gods sake keep the wives as far apart from each other as possible. That's what I learnt from dealing with alot of different farms in alot of different situations.

[cottonpicken]

Well said ado.

[shaney]

I think that getting an understanding of the correlation of farm location to opinion on this issue would be interesting.

I think many of the opinions expressed here are a peer into your personal business philosophy. For many the farm is a lifestyle and for others its a business. Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages but the decision is personal.

Where I live, if you choose the lifestyle approach you are going to get run over by the much larger majority that are trying to expand their farms. To each his own I guess.

[charliep]

On the farm size issue, you might look at a study MNP did for Alberta Agriculture. Conclusion is size doesn't as much as what you do with what you have (similar to other things in life).

[URL="http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/econ13232"]Economics of Farm Size[/URL]

[ado089]

That's just what people with small one's say to save face.