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

[parsley]

Simply trying my best to help with analyzing the lunacy that must be rampant in Eastern Canadian rural areas. After all, their farms have minimized, resulting in small parcels.

We can learn about, and from, their lunacy, can't we.

In the meantime, it's been UFC night. Lesnar. Thunk. And crying in coconut rum. Pars

[vvalk]

Hopper. Talk about destroying a farm 101. Split all the land up between all the siblings no matter what? How could you afford this? One day your farming the next you have to buy out 1/2 or a 1/3 of your land. This will take a generation just to get back to where you were today. You guys who think spliting up the farm is reasonable maybe come down to southern Alberta and see all the Hutterite colonies. In 30 years or less there will be no one farming but them here. What goes in never comes out while all the "family farms" spin their wheels trying to keep afloat buying out family members.

workboots. You say 3500 acre farms are the most profitable. You make $100 an acre profit for $350000. The 10000 or 20000 acre farm makes $75 profit and they make $750000 to $1.5 million prift. Not sure you can compete in the long run.

[parsley]

Okay, can we look at it with another set of eyes:

#1 VValkIV marries
He farms the family unit
All land owned by corp
nasty Divorce
Assets aand Debts split

or

#2 VValkIV
Land @ individual ownership retained by four siblings
sisters and bros who won't farm
rents from siblings
divorce.
Does #1 or #2 best preserve the original family unit?

[per]

It could be argued that having several families working together could lead to divorce.

[parsley]

Agreed, per.

Particularly hands-on working sibling-partners.

My observation is that property **ownership** is crucial to any farm unit.

Two brothers, each with a wife, spells disaster if ownership in not clearly defined. Particularly when their offspring decide to farm.

Farmland ownership is a religion unto itself, and if you do not understand the profund psychological attachment to say, homesteaded land, or 'the family home quarter', wait until you do before you sign a permanent partnership or succession contract.

IMHO. Pars

[cottonpicken]

Economy of scale isnt as a simple concept as people
think.

And trying to compare farming operations to one
another seems dumb to me.

And leveraged for profits also means leveraged for
losses.

[TOM4CWB]

Shaney,

The concept of a family itself OWNING 10,000 ac is not reality. A farm operation in the vast majority of situations includes 40-70 percent rented or crop share land base. The equipment and logistics infrastructure to handle the this size of land base often itself takes a generation to develop. This infrastructure in itself is an achievement of valour and hard work!

For the vast majority of grain farms an owned land base of 50-100percent is simply not realistic unless it is multigenerational heritage land holdings!

[Hopperbin]

V walk the walk are you serious??? One day you farmiing and the next your not?
Where do you get that from? I didn't say split it up no matter what. I said split it up fairly. If you don't someone marrying in will no shit man get a grip.

[grassfarmer]

vvalk,
Doesn't the Hutterite model show that splitting the operation to expand it does work? They do it all the time when they start new colonies. Love them or hate them they seem to have one of the more sustainable and successful business models in Western Canadian agriculture today - and about the only group that all their kids still want to farm.

[Hopperbin]

Statistically walk the walk you land base will be toast in 2 generations statistically so so we will be able to walk on walk land literally and say it is ours. No one needs that shit even your kids.