stamp farms

In December someone asked here what Mike was up to these days.

Waiting for this.
agweb

Yea, the saga continues.

And his 'little' 30,000 acre spread mostly got bought up by Boersen, who was over 80,0000 acres when it imploded this fall, several filed bankrupsty against this operation. It got staved off by Cenex, our farmer owned coop, writing off a $150,000,000 debt for pennies on the dollar, as another big outfit bought it up.

The big keep getting bigger, but the business model seems to regain over and over. Was so nice I got to help fund it all, as a Cenex member.....

Paul

I'm not sticking up for this Stamp with this post, it sounds like he broke the law and should pay for it. He might not be a criminal kind of a guy. It could be his ambition and pride got in the way of common sense and he started doing shady things to save a crumbling empire.

I have a close friend who was in the same fix several years ago. He admitted to me one of his character flaws is "if one is good, twenty is better". He is a Christian person who has made sacrifices to help another person and I think that was a small part of his downfall, but in the end he sat in front of a federal judge for defrauding the FSA or Farm Services Administration and ended up on probation. I sat in on the trial, it was not fun to watch. He has shed many a tear in our conversations. He was desparate so save his empire and his pride kept him from making wise decisions. He is still guilty of defrauding the government, I'm not sticking up for him on that aspect, we taxpayers lost money because of what he did but one of his human frailties got him in trouble. The only reason he did not go to prison is he appologized and then broke down and couldn't continue. The judge said the last person he tried in a case like this showed no remorse, he just sat there and acted like a smart allec. That guy went to prison.



Maybe this Stamp has a different character to him than my friend, maybe Stamp has no remorse and should be locked away, I don't know. But some people just do things in a big way, it's their character, they aren't crooked to the bone, t hey just think big and when things go wrong they go wrong in a big way and make the news.

Had some relatives that took a wrong turn, can appreciate your story and your message. They got things made right again, and move forward. I
hear you on deals like that.

Stamp, Boersen, McM, Illinois Family Farms, they all seem to have the disease of needing to expand for their own ego.

When you get to running 30-90,000 acres and your business can't make it in some of the better years of farming......meanwhile a lot of farm
families are displaced by your actions....

It's just hard to feel sorry for them. And to not have some bitterness their way.

The McM fella had a story not long ago, how the two brothers went from rags to riches back to rags, and how sad. The one brother had to go to
the family multi million dollar lake home and resort in his 2017 deluxe pickup to get away from it all... those assets so far have been kept out of
the bankrupsty, meanwhile several businesses on main street are shorted millions of dollars and again, other farm families were locked out of
farming in the neighborhood.

One of the Illinois Family Farmer guy's was on a different Ag forum like this, seemed like an ok guy. But - their goal was to get over 50,000
acres and they just couldn't operate in a responsible manner. Hurt a lot of people along the way.

All human beings just like me.

But they hurt so many along the way.

I do kinda want to throw fake rocks at them. Not real ones, but gotta do something for the frustration.

You have a good message.

Paul

Rick Rosentreter, IL Family Farms was Top Producer Poster Boy. Pictures of the ADM financed bins and all the hype about knowing his costs was the money maker. You don't know your costs until you know the bushels produced. In the last days he and his family and help were hiding equipment. He farmed two 80s close to me but never got the completely harvested. John Deere and others were picking up all the equipment they could find. About 2 weeks later a son of a BTO that farms in our area from Yorkville, finshed the harvest.

The owner of this wet farm approached a friend that farmed next to this land to rent it. He liked the neatness and clean fields. He wanted $450 cash rent. He had no soil tests and Rosebtreter had just been putting on AMS from ADM. The stalks were about the size of your little finger in the wet areas. The owner ended up renting it to another BTO from Sullivan, IL. So the worm didn't turn very far. This proves the land owners are just aas greedy as the tenants.

My dad told a guy once that he didn't want to farm all the ground,just everything next to him. All of these guys are the same and the suppliers and grain guys like just dealing with a few. But when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Rick Rosentreter, IL Family Farms was Top Producer Poster Boy. Pictures of the ADM financed bins and all the hype about knowing his costs was the money maker. You don't know your costs until you know the bushels produced. In the last days he and his family and help were hiding equipment. He farmed two 80s close to me but never got the completely harvested. John Deere and others were picking up all the equipment they could find. About 2 weeks later a son of a BTO that farms in our area from Yorkville, finshed the harvest.

The owner of this wet farm approached a friend that farmed next to this land to rent it. He liked the neatness and clean fields. He wanted $450 cash rent. He had no soil tests and Rosebtreter had just been putting on AMS from ADM. The stalks were about the size of your little finger in the wet areas. The owner ended up renting it to another BTO from Sullivan, IL. So the worm didn't turn very far. This proves the land owners are just as greedy as the tenants.

My dad told a guy once that he didn't want to farm all the ground, just everything next to him. All of these guys are the same and the suppliers and grain guys like just dealing with a few. But when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Stamp was a Top Producer guy too. Pretty evident that Farm Journal should do a little more homework.

Lending institutions share a major part of the blame. They must forgo a lot of their credit investigation of businesses and owners who are just handling a lot of money. People Like Stamp, who really don't have the smarts to figure everything out, don't need to because there is always someone in front of them wanting to give them more money.