Young farmers face financing issues...an interesting article

[bucket]

This article is in the opinions section of the Western Producer...


That if financial institutions were reading would realize that young people can't start farming....its bad for business....in the long run...its bad for the industry as a whole...

Bottom line....you can no longer work off the farm to get a start in farming...the start up costs are too high...

You could work a lifetime to save a million to start....thats running yourself hard to get there only to have a bad year reset the process...

There has to be better ways...

We need the young people to farm...and try new things ...maybe it is time the financial institutions start looking at better programs...

[ajl]

There is no opportunity to start in farming today unless born into it. The real culprit is inflation. Government uses the stealth tax of inflation to fund itself. If the government stops printing money then interest rates double and land comes for sale at reasonable prices. In that case someone could hope to save up in the hopes of starting a business. So long as fakenomics rules the day, it won't happen. Under the current rules, only large land owners can buy land due to their ability to dollar cost average with owned land that has been inflated. Hello serfdom. this state is highly undesirable in the long run but market rates of interest will bankrupt government so what do you do?

[Taiga]

Agreed, we have runaway inflation on everything except the commodity prices, pretty tough combination.

[bucket]

There is no opportunity to start in farming today unless born into it. The real culprit is inflation. Government uses the stealth tax of inflation to fund itself. If the government stops printing money then interest rates double and land comes for sale at reasonable prices. In that case someone could hope to save up in the hopes of starting a business. So long as fakenomics rules the day, it won't happen. Under the current rules, only large land owners can buy land due to their ability to dollar cost average with owned land that has been inflated. Hello serfdom. this state is highly undesirable in the long run but market rates of interest will bankrupt government so what do you do?

The guys considered good business operators have bid up land to grow and eventually quietly in a back corner office the lender and the good businessman will write down the loan...

the current price of land will put people under water ...equity wise...with a 20 percent decline in land prices....how do they get out from that???...a write down...

Most of the people in lending offices have not seen what is going to happen...BUT...the second generation farmers have been taught the system from the guys that got the writedowns.......they will be fine...co ck of the walk fellows...

[Sheepwheat]

Not much opportunity to farm the usual, definition of insanity way, correct. But there are many, many ways to farm differently from the failed model.

Outside the box, people. Outside the box. We should be encouraging our kids to look at other ways of farming, before it is far too late.

Unless of course y’all think the current model is just peachy. So, rather than belittle the guy with a quarter of land and goats, or yaks, or some other specialty product, selling their products at amazing premiums, for thousands of dollars an acre, we should be embracing them and their ideas, and taking a clue that million dollar machinery, vast fields of cheap commodity grain and meats, and x acres are not the prerequisite, or even needed to farm with success.

There is enormous opportunity for the initiated, for non commodity agriculture.

[bucket]

But you are still competing against this kind of nonsense.....


"""""The agricultural minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has previously praised the fund as helping out “family-run enterprise.” In reality, according to documents obtained by*Blacklock’s Reporter, the big recipients have been major corporate operations: Nestle ($958,382); Chapman’s Ice Cream ($1.1 million); Quality Cheese Inc. ($1.3 million), Arla Foods Inc. ($1.4 million), La Fromagerie Coopérative St-Albert Inc. ($1.5 million), Silani Sweet Cheese Ltd. ($1.7 million), Skotidakis Goat Farm of Eugene ($1.7 million), Smucker Foods of Canada Corp.($1.9 million), COWS Inc. ($1.9 million), Bothwell Cheese Inc. ($1.9 million), La Trappe à Fromage ($3.1 million), Fromagerie Bergeron Inc. ($4 million), Amalgamated Dairies Ltd. ($4.4 million), MDI Holdings Corp. ($5 million), and Gay Lea Foods Co-operative Ltd. ($6.9 million).

And 7 million to billion dollar Saputo....."""""


Finding another way is great while corporations are on welfare.....

[ajl]

Farm diversification projects have come and gone. More power to those who have made them work but the reason why something dominates a region is what has worked in that area over a long period of time. Times are once again changing, and after a decade of expansion in agriculture, the next decade is one of a shrinking industry. One difference between now and the late eighties is that then young people walked off the farm to relatively good wages in town relative to the cost of living. Today they will hang on longer because the off farm job scene is dismal at best.

[Sheepwheat]

If you guys knew the success stories I have run into since changing how I farm, you too would be amazed. The entrepreneurial mindset is alive and very well. In my mind, this is the future, and should be supported, because it is bucking the trend, and is THE ONLY ANSWER to rural death and depopulation. 20 or 30 half section viable farms sprinkled in each RM would go a long way to revitalizing our landscape.

Compared to ten or twenty conventional cheap commodity farms with control of all the land, operating failing ventures who always seem to ask for bailouts while shutting the new shed door on millions of machinery while their dryer purrs away eating through the worthless grain in the automated handling system. While the hired man sits on the new cat clearing more trees to make more land because it is just such a gosh darn feasible venture, this worthless commodity farming... I’ll just sit at home and complain about farming, so my kids will not have hope.

Anyway. There is a difference between diversification ventures of the nineties, ostriches, emus, and the like, and people growing and selling items we import, items that consumers shell out for, items that connect consumers directly to the farm.

Imagine how agriculture would be looked at if we had more of these consumer connections? Wait. But it’s too much work!

Hired man, hook up the b trains and haul thirty loads of canola to adm. My banker and bank account says I need the cash flow, so I can keep seventeen cents in my pocket after everyone is paid. After all my 100 dollar land rent is due!

Lol.

All in good fun folks, all in good fun.

[jazz]

Anyway. There is a difference between diversification ventures of the nineties, ostriches, emus, and the like, and people growing and selling items we import, items that consumers shell out for, items that connect consumers directly to the farm.

Having grown up on a pretty mixed farm, that's a pretty hard path too. You still need to acquire some land, equip and buildings and stock and be able to finance some sort of production. Just to get a few quarters of land together for that sort of operation and decent buildings you are looking at over a million.

No young pup off the street is going to go that far in for that much work and zero support for our trade.

Its going to still be a family enterprise and born into with some help. There is no other way.

Some will see expanded commodity ag as their path but some may go the diversified route as well. Getting up close to the consumer takes a whole new set of skills that many farmers lack.

[15444]

What I have seen over the years, is that the ones that are 'diversified and value-chain based' are the first ones to lay their John Han**** on paper for government handouts. Gotta love the government funded programs that publish the names of recipients for all to see - leaves no question as to who got da money.

[Flatlander]

Here is outside the box, yet has a few similarities to dairy. 43560 square feet of dirt, 600 v 3 ph power, couple or three thousand gallons h2o/ day, a decent shed, good work ethic, and you could gross a half a dozen million/annum for less than the cost of a section of farmland. Trudeaus new ag economy op. Your still a farmer, you can still work through Farm Credit, I bet you can even put 1% in Ag invest and likely even be in Agrivation or whatever they call the other program now.

[Sheepwheat]

Up here one can buy a quarter for less than 200 000 easy. A half is for sale nearby with a house and yard, fences etc. for 400 ish. Too sloughy for the big grain guys I guess? So land costs for sure make a huge difference.

Remember though, when you are talking revenues of thousands an acre, it is not nearly so hard to pay for as one may think.

And you’re also right, it is far too much work for most grain farmers to fathom switching or even accepting it as feasible, let alone doing something to change for their families sake. Too much work year round, too different. Too far outside the box I guess.

I have high hopes though.

[GDR]

Here is outside the box, yet has a few similarities to dairy. 43560 square feet of dirt, 600 v 3 ph power, couple or three thousand gallons h2o/ day, a decent shed, good work ethic, and you could gross a half a dozen million/annum for less than the cost of a section of farmland. Trudeaus new ag economy op. Your still a farmer, you can still work through Farm Credit, I bet you can even put 1% in Ag invest and likely even be in Agrivation or whatever they call the other program now.

I'm guessing you aren't talking fish farming😁

[SASKFARMER]

The Hutts work as long as cheap labour.

Some BTOs are looking at leaving the industry it’s coming.

Maybe one really big one.

Costs are two high for any one doesn’t matter what size your at.


Farms that do the best are family farm or corp that’s 5000 acres and down. Study after study shows this.

[jazz]

I have high hopes though.

I always challenge someone to go stand in the supermarket fruit and vegetable isle once and see how fussy consumers truly are. It will make you think twice before going in with that crew.

I mean farmers have lots of equity, they could buy restaurants or gas stations or apartments or stocks or any number of businesses and really diversify but they don't. 99% will just get more land.