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Crapp farms sale - bankrupt again.

rockyridgefarm

rockyridgefarm

Well-known Member
Anyone going to Crapps bankruptcy sale? They're selling off his land at the end of the month, then selling off the equipment at the beginning of next month. They sold off his 2000 holstien steers in January and his pigs got bought in bankrputcy for $220,000 for 3072 pigs. I drove around over the weekend to look them over. He sure had a talent for wrecking a farm.

I'd say good riddance, but I'm sure he'll pop back up again. Someone will finance him.
 
Don't know who that is,but there's a BTO dairy here that has something going on. They had bought a dairy farm that's gone under a few times that's about 10 miles from their main operation. They had the barns full of heifers and had a man living in the house. The cattle and everything else are gone and there are for sale signs around the place.
 
Cheer up! He will be gone in 7 years and in the mean time you can write letters to Her Rotteness Criminal in the federal hoosegow where she will soon be.
 
Hmmm, you're either reading between the lines JD or you could use an eye check ...... Russ made no mention of any "she" at all in his post.
 
(quoted from post at 08:35:39 03/19/18) You're saying the farm went to Crapp?

Paul
Click to expand...

He was running over 20,000 acres. He apparently only owned 2000 of them. There’s a feedlot on one, a hog barn on another, a grain setup on at least two, etc
 
Have heard that Dean Foods has cut loose 140 dairy farms, not sure exactly where these 140 are, but could be the reason some farms suddenly have cattle disappearing... Sad to see even more dairies
disappear.
 
They need to change what they are growing I see General Mills has leased 35,000 acres of land in North Dakota to grow organic wheat they can't keep up with demand.Over the mountain here
in the Shenandoah Valley the Organic poultry growers have just bought a 900,000$ slaughter facility and have 30 large scale growers in VA and WV and are getting ready to expand again.On the other hand the conventional chicken growers are shrinking their operations and I know a couple that say they'll be out of business in a year or so.
Over at Dayton VA some dairy farms went organic and pooled their resources and opened a processing facility to bottle and sell milk,cream etc have their own brand they're making money while most dairy farmers are loosing big time.
 
i've heard there are a couple big and medium dairies around us that are going under.

buddy who raises dairy replacement heifers said he can get the same $ out of beef steers right now and some guys around here that were feeding out beef on contract have stopped and the cattle are/have been moved to feed lots out west. too much protein on the hoof or claw right now even with the good economy.

>>of course we don't see the price adjustments at the grocery.

not related to this guy necessarily but i suspect its going to get worse. more small/medium dairies are going to go under and more and more mega dairies going in.
 
It won't take long til the lower production of organics creates a shortage and the pendulum swings back.
 
What do you base your opinion on? I've been hearing the same thing for 20 years and organic demand has only increase all the time with no end in sight.I'll bet the horse collar and harness folks said tractors were just a fad that wouldn't last(LOL)
 
The fact that the population is steadily increasing and organic production is significantly lower that regular production. Wj an folks start to get hungry they will abandon organics quickly. Or even an economic downturn, when it gets too expensive.
 
The 'everyone is going to starve' stuff is the dumbest of all arguments and flies in the face of reality.The fact is the biggest problems with farming these days is massive surpluses
that are pushing prices to the bottom and the USA is having to dump things like soybeans and corn on the Chinese market for next to nothing.The profit margin on organics is far more that on conventional farms especially now when many conventional operations are running in the red.And what's the cure these folks come up with for shrinking demand? Produce more.
How you think that's gonna work out?
 
(quoted from post at 08:39:56 03/19/18) Have heard that Dean Foods has cut loose 140 dairy farms, not sure exactly where these 140 are, but could be the reason some farms suddenly have cattle disappearing... Sad to see even more dairies
disappear.
Click to expand...
There are 13 in east Tennessee being cut for sure.
 
Oh I get it ...... if you reply to a post, that means you are automatically including all related, alternate, and opposite topics & opinions. I didn't know that Grizz, thanks for the heads up. Sort of becomes fake news if you get my drift.
 
Did he have semi trucks out for hire? I see Crapp farms hopper bottoms over here all the time. Pretty junky looking equipment. I thought they where north-east of Prairie De Chein???
 
(quoted from post at 11:06:17 03/19/18) They need to change what they are growing I see General Mills has leased 35,000 acres of land in North Dakota to grow organic wheat
Click to expand...

Wonder how that works since ND has an anti-corporate farming law that limits corporations other that close family operations from operating a farm in ND????

Or has the law changed?
 
The hardest part about going to organic farming is learning to spray pesticides in the dark!---Tee
 
You folk are aware of

Illinois fAmily Farms.

Stamp Farms.

Boreson Farms (bought up Stamp assets when that went under.....)

McM Farms.

All of these were 30,000 - 80,000 acres. Half folded in the best times of farming every, couldn't make a go of it.

Now that times are tough, it will be the 1980s, only different, all over again.

Dairy - Walmart stopped buying milk from Dean Foods, and is contracting their own big farms to supply milk. So Dean Foods is dropping a lot of dairy farms. Not much else they can do, they have no where to sell the excess milk.

This comes at a time when there is excess milk available all across the country. Kids drink pop, not milk. The Hollywood crowd has had a hate fest going on against milk in their 'beauty' magazines for years, they prefer coke..... the bigger dairy farms have gotten much bigger, and bottle their own brand of milk, several 3000 head dairy farms each. And so on. The typical USA dairy farmer is being pushed out.

It's called vertical integration. Happened to poultry many decades ago, happened to hogs not long ago. That General Mills deal on the old Diamond Ring farm running 39,000 acres privately by the company is an early effort to do the same to grain crops.

Push the farmer out, control the product and the cost from beginning to end.

Consumers will love it, cheaper prices. Until there are no farmers, and then they can charge what they want. Only be 5-6 companies running 'farming' in the USA and they won't hurt each other on prices.......

We continue to follow the path of USSR and China as to how we want to do business. The cheapering section of the consumer/buyer in the USA can't wait to get what they deserve. They have been cheering for this for a few decades now.

Good luck to them.

Paul
 
Organic production will solve the oversupply issue.

That is about the -only- widespread positive it has for the nations food supply!

Yikes.

Hats off to those of you that do organic production, nothing wrong with following that fad, the market is there.

But, it leads us to vertical integration even faster, and you will be replaced by General Mills owning your land even faster. Not a good long term outlook for you.

Paul
 
Better outlook than any other type of farming and organic has a built in advantage the consumers of organic foods will always favor the smaller growers/producers over the larger ones
local farmers markets prove that.Whereas the McDonald's folks could care less who or how the food was produced.
 
So, I can haul grain from my field to the conventional elevator 3/4 mile from my driveway. They can store it for me, dry it for me, sell it when I need to sell it, deliver any grain I store on my farm any weekday I want and get a check 4 days later.

Or I can grow organic, and deliver it to the one buyer 23 miles away. When they want it. They will pay for it on their schedule. If they get full or their buyers change their mind, I am outa luck. My crop is sitting in my expensive bins, and on one within 100 miles wants them.

That premium looks real nice, but it has a -lot- of risk to it. If you are in a Mitch where the buyer is close and works well with you great. I'm all for it.

You know how much I would need to invest in crop drying, storeage, and transportation to go organic? How much risk in dealing with just one buyer?

Give it some though. I did a few years ago........

Organic costs a lot at the store. I don't understand what it offers to consumers, butt hat is their business. It doesn't offer much at all to the farmer, unless you are in a special nitche location or dirt or situation.


The actual direction this is all going is like General Mills. Screw the farmer don't need them. Control the land, hire a management firm from California, use technology to run the tractors and combines, hire very few people, no farmers, and vertically integrate.

If I had a nitche of organic that penciled out for me, I would do it. But I would understand the risk I was taking, and the overall short term the ride will last.

Paul

Paul
 
The dumb thing is thinking only short term. I was speaking simply long term. You can very likely make some money in the short term, but inevitably the soil will become depleted and then someone wwill be saddled with the extra cost of bringing that soil back up in fertility. There is no possibility of feeding the world with organic farming, which was my point and whether short term profits were possible.
 
One of the largest benefits of vertical integration is quality control. If a food processor purchases from the open market they either have to quality check every shipment or their quality falls to the level of their worst supplier.
 
Hey you're running your own business there its up to you to make it profitable if you can't make it profitable for what ever reason then you need to get into to something
you can make a living at same for me and everyone else in this country.Its not up to anyone else or the Gov't to see that you succeed,success or failure is on each individual to come up
with a plan for life.and Lord help anyone that would suggest a farmer change things or their way of doing anything.No one 'penciled' out my life's plan I just to do it on my own
and seek and reconize my own opportunities wouldn't have it any other way.
 
Well that goes without saying Grizz ..... supporting The Don would be another example of doing that very thing.
 
Be fun to sit down a while and swap notes, or visit a week in each other's shoes.

I've changed so much on my farm in the past 10 years, my head is dizzy. It would seem an organic farm, by definition, would be standing still in the 1950s? Just a little fun, but if you think about it, not sure what you are trying to say.....

Organic has no real value, it is a fad. It may grow to dominate the food industry, that is fine. But it is just food, many studies show an average organic farm has more pathogens, less nutrition in the food than an average conventional farm. Neither is good or bad; but if that is the next push you will make, I'm aware of the data......

So, the organic growers are cashing in on a fad. That's cool. But it likely is going to be short term. The big food companies, as General Mills is showing, or Deans Foods, or the other very small handful of companies that controls 90% of the food - they will not be paying a farmer those kinds of premiums. They will control the production themselves. You will be cut out.

Or, the organic fad will peak and fade away again, as fads tend to do.

So your business plan is pretty short term. You are jumping in bed with some cut throat operators.

My concerns are not about me. I operate dad's farm, added only a very few acres over the years, stuff is paid for and I'll be find the next few years. My 1980s machinery is nicely paid for, and I might well farm less acres than you do! Your assumptions are probably pretty funny to those that know me.

My concern is about the next generation of farmer. The little towns around me. What are they gonna do?

The current direction Ag is taking is not economically sustainable.

Organic production is even worse!

I'm looking for a different direction, one where people listen, to start with.

If you and the union guy up above have it all figured out for yourselves, that's fine. Seems pretty selfish and short term to me, somehow. And I don't think you mean it to be selfish, I just think you haven't looked out at the big picture, and what the future is. This is no personal dude between you and me....

We will always be stuck with a farm program. It is how the govt nudges and controls and does its thing with internal USA politics and global politics. It's silly to think that will ever go away.

So we need to figure out a better system then we have.

The crop insurance deal now is just dumb and anti- farm as the day is long, but you know if we kill it, the first person calling his congressperson in a froth will be that union fella up above, can't cut money to farmers we need our pentions invested in the insurance companies, and we need farmers buying iron with those subsidies! Oh the horror, put those insurance subsidies back and double them!

And you have a deal going where organic is the only way to farm, if everyone did then everything would be great for everyone. But - think that through?

How could that possibly work? It wouldn't.

And so, what is the future of Ag in the USA?

I want a better one than we have.

Yours doesn't work. It does for you and that is great, but for the country, for the farmers, 20 or 40 years from now, that is a terrible dead end for Ag in the USA.....

The union guy doesn't understand at all.

Congress listens to bankers and insurance companies, they have the nicest, biggest buildings in the middle of the biggest urban areas, they make the most contributions. Nothing in the 'farm program bill' is for farmers. It is 80% to poor people, it is for the bankers and the insurance companies to get subsidies.

No one listens to real farmers. Or works towards a better Ag future.

That is sad.

Paul
 
I'd say your basic premise that organics are a fad is false,you just hope its a fad.People are getting way more interested/concerned all the time in how their food is raised and what is in their
food.With the Gov't running out of support money and less consumer demand for chemical/conventional produced food the future for fellows growing GMO corn and beans the future is pretty grim.No way I'd want to be on that sinking ship.
As far as the Gov't farm program I have never cared or been interested in what it was as I have never wanted anything to do with it.
 
John I have no problem with good management and hard work growing any business. The trouble with many BTO type of farmers they have skated the edge of financial profitability. So every time there is any kind of down turn in crop prices they bleed money like crazy. Then the majority run and file some form of bankruptcy to stop the fall out from their bad business practices.

The largest farm in my area has filed chapter 11 twice in the last 30 years. So while I paid my debts off they got hundreds of thousands, may be millions, wrote off. I talked to one of the boys of the BTO a few years ago at ADM while in the corn line. When corn was $5-7 they where renting ground with rents so high they may only be clearing $30-50 an acre on a gross of over $1300-1500 an acre. I know of two different farms that they front paid $550 dollars an acre per year for a three year contract. Meaning they paid $1650 on March 1st. of the first contract year to farm the land the next three years. Currently they are behind on several of their rental contracts. I have talked to three fellows that did not get their March 1st. payment yet. Yet to hear the old man talk they are going strong with no problems. In Dec. he ran up a piece of ground that was selling next to a friend of mine. The auction clearly stated you had to have 10% of the purchase amount in certified funds the day of the auction. The BTO got the high bid but could not produce a certified check. He wanted them to hold a personal check until the next week. The backup bidder got the farm. He had his money with him.

This is not limited to this one fellow. I could list you 10-20 of them off the top of my head in the 30 miles around me.. What really POes me is the bank and Farm Credit guys that fawn all over these guys like their are special. They all have had debt written off in the past.
 
Way to go Russ! I guess now we'll have to hear about "fake bankruptcies" and listen to "NO chapter 11, there were NO chapter 11's" for the next three years now too. Uff da, LOL!
 
You have an interesting perspective on things.

I wish you well. That I honestly mean.

I think your style of farming is in bigger trouble down the road a decade or two than conventional farming, but we get to play the game and take our turns to get there. :)

Ideally, we all make it.

You know, it's pretty funny. I'm such a small scale, and old fashioned farmer, I don't fit in over at NAT, my ways are too backwards and small scale. The real farmers harvest my whole farm in a day.

And here, you tell me I'm some sort of big govt farmer. Hell, I dislike crop insurance so much I haven't taken any since 1992. But no matter, I'm some evil big govt scammer I guess.

This morning I was supposed to go to my cousins spouse's funeral, but I locked myself out of the house with no keys and the backup key had issues I couldn't work out for an hour, so I couldn't go. Very disappointed in myself.

Just not my day, I guess! I'm too big, too small, and too dumb.

Hell of a combination.

Paul
 
But then comes the sale of all their assets and all of us profit by how cheaply we can buy stuff at a forced sale and we all take advantage of it. I know a lot of little guys by comparison that filed bankruptcy as well. Some got too big for their britches and some just did not know how to manage. We can't fit everyone into our mold of what we think they ought to do. What the biggies do never really affected me one way or the other-at least not in the long haul.
 
The answer is now and has always been get government out of farming and every other enterprise. The Great Society was going to end poverty in this country and trillions later the percent of those below the poverty line is still the same. One of the ways to do that is to try to elect individuals who are anti farm bill, anti trariff, and anti everything else government does except what the Constitution allows. It has all become politicized for votes. We need to stop fooling ourselves that Gov't is the answer. As one congressman admitted the gov't can mess up a two car parade. But the nature of man being what it is we will support anything that we feel will put money in our pocket whether or not in the long run it will be detrimental to all concerned.
 
The only resemblance to the U S S R and China is the fact gov't gets involved and the more involved they become the more resemblance there is.
 
Paul, gotta call you out on this. 30 years ago you could have called organic a fad. Not today. In fact it's close to becoming main stream rather than a niche market. I remember back in the late 90's, I was ask to pick up something organic for a neighbor and having to ask where to find it at the store. They had a total of about 4 foot of shelf space dedicated to organic. Same store today has a whole multiple row section of it now. Heck even Walmart, who normally attracts people who can't really afford the inflated organic prices has a rather large selection. Walmart ain't doing that because it ain't selling. Walmart doesn't do a thing that isn't profit motivated. They know to the fraction of a cent what each items makes them.

As far as people starving? I doubt it. Way back before the GMO days, back in the 50s/60s/70s the government was buying up all the surplus and the American farmer grew. All the while they were producing 70% or the worlds food. Today the American farmer is only growing about 45% of the worlds food and farming far fewer acres to do it. We have millions of acres of former farm land sitting idle.

Now don't get me wrong. I too think that a lot of the organic thing is a farce too. But I think it's here to stay. People are concerned with what they eat. And once someone claims something isn't safe it isn't up to them to prove it. It's up to the grower to prove it is safe. Good luck with that.

Rick
 
(quoted from post at 15:13:00 03/19/18) Sounds like the current resident in the WH!
Click to expand...

I don't see anything screwed up. Please explain, and leave the partisan hate out of it
 
(quoted from post at 12:20:35 03/20/18)
(quoted from post at 15:13:00 03/19/18) Sounds like the current resident in the WH!
Click to expand...

I don't see anything screwed up. Please explain, and leave the partisan hate out of it
Click to expand...

Russ is one of those guys who would prefer to have a known criminal in the WH as long it's from his side.

Rick
 
I have copies of Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine from the 1950's and the organic foods movement has steady grown since then.About the longest lasting 'fad' in history.
In reality its is a steady growing industry with many more dedicated consumers every year.
 
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