if acquire 30 acres tillable, hmmm

A few options if acquire property with 30 acres tillable.

End game would be to get it Certified Organic.

Rent out ground to interested neighbor to farm for the first few years.
Put it into CRP for a few years?
Farm it myself for a few years following practices to get it certified organic?

Just curious what peoples thoughts are. Reason being is I would not be living on or near that property, would be about an hour and 15 minute drive.
But I would be happy with the property being it is a good mix of woods and crop.

As I hear is a good idea to have a mix that brings some sort of income to ease the tax and monthly mortgage payment, even if not farming it yourself out of the gate, but eventually.

Surely others have acquired some small tracts a bit of a drive away, and have some wisdom about what they learned was the best way to handle them the first few years.

If the plan is to sell organic produce, first investigate the market in the area to make sure that the added income from certified organic offsets the far higher labor involved.

good suggestion, thanks

That sounds like a great plan.

Buy tillable land (in your own words) and have a plan to put it in CRP.
I better stop here before I get going good.

I wouldn't try to farm it until or unless you move near it- especially organic vegetables, you need to be weeding every day to keep ahead of them. I'd rent it out until I could move there. BTDT with small scale cattle operation- you'll want to keep the cattle numbers down, that way you lose less money. Forget CRP- you have to sign up for multi years, and you're defeating the whole purpose of having the land.

CRP is for highly erodible land and is not a program you put in for a couple of years then pull it out.

You're not going to get it in CRP even if you wanted to. There are no acres available in 95% of the country because acerage enrollment is capped. You'd be about 957th in line in most areas since all the geniuses were dumping CRP left and right when prices were high and now they're all crying about losing their @sses on the land that they just HAD to pull out of CRP and now can't get back in.

And besides that, as WGM says the land has to qualify, so unless all 30 acres is on a hillside next to a creek, there's about 0% chance your whole 30 qualifies.

If you're serious about this, first as suggested you'd better get a a handle on your local market.

And I'd also ask yourself are you really good enough of a farmer to go organic? A lot of guys think organic is simple, natural, and all that BS. Bullcrap. It's harder than he!!. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

I talked to a real knowledgeable producer down in New Zealand a few years back and he said the hardest thing he ever did in his life was to spend 8 years re-learning everything he knew about farming in order to go organic. He said people think it's just about NOT doing a few things. Wrong. It's about doing EVERYTHING differently and how to do that is a daily adventure in figuring it out as you go.

I laugh and laugh when I hear Organic Cowboys talk about how "hard" weed control is. No Schmidt, Sherlock. You think everybody's paying what we are for Roundup-ready seed and spraying Roundup cause we got too much money and like the smell of Roundup in the morning?

Grouse

Good comments about educating me on CRP.

Agreed, CRP is not going to happen, gotta get in line.

Hey------Leave my Schmidt out of this!-Thanks Tee

And don't forget that unless you have access to something to fertilize with you will deplete your soil trying to go organic. Any time you haul something off the soil it needs to be replaced or you are depleting your fertility, which will catch up to you eventually, just as it does for most organic farmers.

Wonder how many of us are biting our tongue on this one.

I realize the author doesn't realize the slap in the face his questions are to real farmers, but man, it gets depressing how little people care any more.

Paul

If you want some intelligent and useful answers about organic farming this definitely is not the place to get it for the most part.If you're not trying to kill every plant and animal in the county except for GMO corn and soybeans then you're not counted as a Real Farmer.Welcome to the ranks of Fake Farmers,we're the folks that aren't going broke and don't depend
on a Gov't handout to make ends meet.

I assume you see yourself as being among the folks that are in your opinion Real Farmers,so what is it that you think sets you out from those you don't consider to be Real Farmers?

I?m organic.. You better be able to fight weeds and pest or whatever Mother Nature throws at you. If your weed control isn?t top notch it?ll haunt you for yrs. It?s labor intensive.. it doesn?t happen overnight.

30 acres tillable but a good mix of crops and woods? Timber land is NOT tillable and trees are a long term crop! Pines are at least 20 years from planting to harvest minimum.
If your planning to rent it why go organic? There was a place near me 20 acres all timber but 7 acres. I offered to buy it but the deal collapsed because he wanted to tie me to organic and stay at the same price. He eventually lost to the bank and Hispanics turned it to truck farming.

An hour and 15 minutes is a very long commute for a small acreage. If you commute to the farm four times a week it could be tough to pay your travel costs much less pay off the mortgage. Organic farming is very labor intensive. New weeds will have sprouting before you arrive back home. Leaving tools and equipment that far from home might be inviting trouble too. I would look for some ground close by or adjoining your home.

Well said Goose.. The world would starve to death on organic.. Half the ones who have tired it around here either cheated or folded within a couple of years. Long gone fad that just will not make ends meet if you try to do it on very many acres. I implore the idea that if we use round-up or weed control we are not real farmers.. and that we are all going broke taking government handouts. FACT IS WE HAVE A LOT OF BIG FARMERS THAT ARE NOT GOING BROKE AND ARE FEEDING THE NATION ON CHEAP FOOD.

(quoted from post at 15:46:43 04/09/18) Well said Goose.. The world would starve to death on organic.. Half the ones who have tired it around here either cheated or folded within a couple of years. Long gone fad that just will not make ends meet if you try to do it on very many acres. I implore the idea that if we use round-up or weed control we are not real farmers.. and that we are all going broke taking government handouts. FACT IS WE HAVE A LOT OF BIG FARMERS THAT ARE NOT GOING BROKE AND ARE FEEDING THE NATION ON CHEAP FOOD.

Click to expand...

JM,

Thanks for throwing Syngenta's sales pitch for Nematicides into the mix. You have any original thoughts? 40% of food is wasted from the farm to the end user. I've personally seen a 2 million bushel pile of rotten corn in Arlington, WI about 10 years ago. They were hauling it to the ethanol plant in Cambria until the plant told them to stop sending it. So they blended it into the "good" corn instead. Wonder how many other corn piles are out there, just waiting. How's all that overproduction working out for you?

Local BTO just had all his bankrupcty auctions over the past month. I loose track - this is either the third our fourth time. Looks like he's done "feeding the world". That is, until he finds another financier. Then he'll leave all his creditors holding the bag again. He's got his kids in on the game now.

Seems the conventional guys get especially cranky when their prices get especially low.

When ever someone tells me how organic can
maintain soil fertility long term I'll
become a believer, til then it is a short
term proposition which leaves the soil
stripped. So far no one who claims to know
organics has ever talked about long term
soil fertility.

(quoted from post at 08:31:37 04/09/18) A few options if acquire property with 30 acres tillable.

End game would be to get it Certified Organic.

Rent out ground to interested neighbor to farm for the first few years.
Put it into CRP for a few years?
Farm it myself for a few years following practices to get it certified organic?

Just curious what peoples thoughts are. Reason being is I would not be living on or near that property, would be about an hour and 15 minute drive.
But I would be happy with the property being it is a good mix of woods and crop.

As I hear is a good idea to have a mix that brings some sort of income to ease the tax and monthly mortgage payment, even if not farming it yourself out of the gate, but eventually.

Surely others have acquired some small tracts a bit of a drive away, and have some wisdom about what they learned was the best way to handle them the first few years.

Click to expand...

Micheal,


It doesn't seem like you have a firm plan in your head. What is your goal? Homesteading? CSA? Grassfed beef? Whatever direction you want to go will determine the best plan. If grassfed beef, best bet would be to seed it down to pasture, build good fences, and rent it to a neighbor for the first three years. If CSA, plant cover crops and till-downs for the first few years and take the cost into consideration.

How much equipment do you have to do what you want to do? How much experience do you have in whatever you want to do? Seems most people who fail do so because they don't have a good plan. If they have a good plan, they don't have experience. If they have a good plan and good experience, they don't have good follow-through.

You gotta have a long term goal.

(quoted from post at 16:58:15 04/09/18) When ever someone tells me how organic can
maintain soil fertility long term I'll
become a believer, til then it is a short
term proposition which leaves the soil
stripped. So far no one who claims to know
organics has ever talked about long term
soil fertility.

Click to expand...

Jon F,

You're right. Fertility is not as easy as getting the Co-op to bring out a tank of anhydrous and a spreader full of 9-23-30. Frankly, that doesn't work so well as it used to for conventional guys, either.

Good soil fertility involves manures and cover crops. I'm surely learning, and maybe not fast enough. I am working toward never having bare soil. If the crop is done, a cover crop is growing. I have 8500 laying hens, which helps greatly for manure, but I also buy more manure. Also, fertilizers can and should be used, but they cannot be heavily processed such as Muriate of Potash. Instead Potassium sulfate needs to be used. I'm spreading 175 ton of Hi-cal Lime this spring. As long as it doesn't have fillers and the mine is OMRI listed it can be used. I am soil testing every other year right now because the farm just came out of CRP and the PH and PK levels are depleted. Once I get them up to snuff, I'll go to a three or four year testing cycle.

As I said, I'm learning. I'll fill you in on what I figure out sometime in 2040

Come look at my garden its been organic for 20 years and if there is a more fertile piece of ground around my area I'd love to know what they are doing.Organic growers use a whole spectrum of products most conventional growers have never heard of like kelp,Planters II,Sea 90,Nepturne's Harvest and the list goes on and on.Plus organic fertilizers that work much like conventional fertilizers are available made from manure and other things.Organic ground is going to have far more trace minerals because most conventional growers have never heard of many of them much less add them to their soil.I'll also put the quantity and quality of the vegetable I harvest against anyone's and unlike the produce in the grocery store mine actually has a good taste and texture.And the good part is it really doesn't cost that much more to grow things organically once the soil is built up.

Certified organic is a very vague goal. Organic what???? Produce, grain crops, beef, and etc. So your goals need to be more defined.

No one is going to rent it for a few years doing organic farming. It takes three years to become certified organic. So you have to live with the lower yields and fight the weeds an all while selling for non organic prices.

CRP is a 10-15 year commitment. Also there is going to be very few "new" acres go into the CRP program. Many more people with acres are wanting in the program than there is acres available.

Living more than an hour away and trying to grow organic crops is going to be very hard to do an be successful. Organic production is the most management intense style of farming. It also is the most labor intense way of farming too. Controlling weeds and other pests are a constant battle. The only way that you could even hope to be successful on 30 acres is to grow produce. This is even a higher level of management and labor involved.

Now to make the odds even worse. Any ground that is farmable is going to require a lot of capitol to purchase it. For organic you need good quality ground too. So the purchase price will be on the high side of the market too. If it has been farmed to death and has little to zero fertility your doomed to fail. You would need livestock for a natural fertilize supply. No form of livestock works living an hour away.

I know of a few successful organic produce growers. They are super managers an do every step correct and on time. 24 hours too late on harvesting some produce reduces its valve by half or more. A weed escape this year can cause trouble for decades down the road because of the seeds it can produce. I know of more successful organic dairies than any other type of organic farming. They can utilize roughage in their cows diet so they have many more cropping options. If the weeds take over a field they can make it into silage before the weeds go to seed and still have some thing to feed the cows. Not good quality but at least something. If your growing grain only and weeds take over your stuck letting them mature with your crop. So now you have more weed pressure for next year. That cycle can get out of control real fast.

I wish you well. Every farmer does it a little different. I can tell you that farming is a very mature industry so that makes it much harder to get into. Looking at your goal of 30 acre tillable and maybe and equal part not tillable. This would mean 60 acres total. In most areas of the country this would cost you between $4000-10000 an acre even with half not being tillable. So can you make that work financially??? There will be little return for the first few years if you go organic. Can you make that cash flow??

I know right now regular farm ground will not cash flow on its own merit. So you have to have other income to pay for it. That can be paid for land or off farm income. So the capital struggle will be as hard as learning how to farm while making any money.

So I think your need to fine tune a workable "plan" before going much further.

It appears that you don't have enuff experience to have a workable plan. Organic comes with it's own set of problems----do plenty of research. government program doesn't work the way u imply!

I figured you were among others here, you've been doing it a while I believe?

JDSeller has a reply along my thinking.

Having a tough week, you don't want to hear my violin song....... reading the message, it appears farming is easy, just buy 30 acres, make it organic of course, and roll in the money in so many different ways.......

Doesn't seem to be much of a real plan there tho.

I love people living the dream, and hope he goes for it and enjoys it. And does well with it.

It was just worded so as to hit me on a bad day in the wrong way.

As you follow me around the forum, it appears you never have a bad day, and are much superior to me in every way.

Well that's fine. Frankly you have a pretty low goal if that is something worth pursuing.

Paul

AWESOME, but how would you do that over 30 acres, or more to the commercial side, a few thousand acres. Anyone can do a garden, hauling small amounts of organic fertilizer is easy. But if everyone did it, sooner or later the fertilizer will run out and we will get another dust bowl. This is why commercial fertilizers were invented, because when things start leaving the farm they need to be replaced. And as long as garbage and sewer is treated or burried those nutrients will continue to disappear. I hear all the time about sea weed and other things from the ocean as well, but how long can you rob from the ocean before that becomes a problem? The only way organic can be sustainable is if everything gets returned back to the soil. That is just not going to happen.

" the world would starve to death on organics" so how come there are people on earth? Shouldn't humans have starved to death before commercial fertilizer was invented?? Just saying.......

I guess we found a home for this train!



As you say, the 'sustainability' of organic seems poor, when so much seaweed, kelp, and manure has to be imported from other lands to build up the small garden spots.

The only way it becomes closecto sustainable is to be using what that rain is hauling. Not looking of a landfill a 1/3 of the continent away to burry it in a hole.

Paul
Lost train

95% of most people's problems I know are self induced, the smart ones figure out what they are doing wrong and try to improve things,the others find its just easier to blame others and feel sorry for themselves.

Plenty of people are growing large scale organically,there is a huge glut of manure from chicken and hog operations here in the Mid Atlantic States even to the point many places restrict how much can be used.Things like kelp are needed in small quantities for minor elements.Plus things like Sea 90 are made from Seawater no shortage of sea water for sure.Over in Dayton VA
5 pretty good size dairy farms have joined together to have their own processing facility where they bottle milk,make cheese,etc and sell directly to consumers and local stores.Ever heard of
legume cover crops? They gather N from the air and store it, the plants next crop benefits from the N and the organic matter.
As far as how most crops like soybeans and corn are grown now conventionally its a system that can't keep going like its now done,too many surpluses,and requires the Gov't to
fork over too much money to keep it going, the Federal crop insurance programs and others cost the Gov't Billion$ every year.You think that can keep up? Plus conventional farmers costs are rising all the time for fertilizer,seed,chemicals and the demand for what they grow is less so how's that working out?I've been to several farm sell out sales this year they weren't
organic type operations.I'll say a farmer in a rural area many miles from the population centers of the country are between a rock and a hard place but for a farm these days close to huge
populations the prospects are great really.These suburban and city folks that many in the rural areas seem to despise have lots of money to buy the type food they want and are more than willing to fork the $$$ over for what they want.Things are changing the local organic inputs supplier has gone from a little one room store 25 years ago to now is a very big operation with
dealers and outlets in other states says a lot.

The 'starve to death' bloody flag waving is total garbage.The biggest problem with conventional crop farming these days is reduced US consumer demand and surpluses.Look at what a panic has set in
when the Communist Chinese have said they might not buy US grown soybeans,pretty bad system when your best customer is Chinese slave labor.And the moment the US Gov't decides to
the cut out the Farm Welfare to the big operations you mention stick a fork in them.They are done.

(quoted from post at 19:07:44 04/09/18) " the world would starve to death on organics" so how come there are people on earth? Shouldn't humans have starved to death before commercial fertilizer was invented?? Just saying.......

Click to expand...

It's pretty simple, and once you figure it out you will be kicking yourself for making such a myopic comment...

The number of people has increased exponentially, but the number of acres is NOT increasing. At today's current population levels, with 1940's production levels, there would be widespread starvation.

Actually there are millions of people starving right now but the cause doesn't have anything to do with agricultural production it lousy Gov't that are causing it.There are literally millions of acres of land here in the Eastern US that could produce billions of pounds of food if it were needed and profitable.I've been hearing the old we are all gonna starve crap for 60 years.You can only cry "Wolf" so many times until no one will believe you.Walk down any street in American pretty plain to see starvation ain't an issue(LOL)

The starvation isn't here, it's elsewhere where food is harder to get and gets worse quickly as prices rise. I think there is about a 10% over stock in food crops right now, so it won't take much reduction to cause big problems. Of course the problems will not be here so it is not a real issue.

I thought manure also had to be certified organic to be used on organic land.

There are over 30 large scale organic chicken growers in my area plenty of fertilizer there and the number of organic growers is increasing while the number of conventional growers is
decreasing.Organic growers coop just bought a $900,000 slaughter facility.

I'm not into the 'feed the World' stuff let them feed themselves,actually cheap food from the USA has bankrupted local farmers in many parts of the world contributing to the bad situation in many places now.Not to mention its also contributed to bankrupting the USA.