"Value of SD Land Rising"

UGUIDE

UGUIDE

Active member
Title of article in Agweek this week. I recall some other posts saying land values flat or declining or about to decline.....don't bet on it.

SDSU reports cropland rose 6.8% in 2009. Other interesting tidbits is that land value has doubled since 2005 and increased fivefold since 1992.
 
Land values and pheasant hunting

Lyman and Tripp counties with some really good pheasant hunting continues to have increased land values represented in recent land exchanges. I wish I would have gone in debt to the point a few years back that I couldn't have seen the sunshine instead of playing it safe for me with others still saying I was crazy. I wonder if I should say getting more now is just as good as then?

Going to the farm this weekend to check things out I've heard from some even with all the cover they are seeing a bunch of birds. I'm anxious to see how my habitat improvemnts have helped the wildlife.
 
UGUIDE said:
Title of article in Agweek this week. I recall some other posts saying land values flat or declining or about to decline.....don't bet on it.

SDSU reports cropland rose 6.8% in 2009. Other interesting tidbits is that land value has doubled since 2005 and increased fivefold since 1992.
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^That's why the price of your food in the grocery store has went up 10 folds what it was in 1992. It's out of hand, people can't even afford to feed their families. Corp. farming is wrecking this country
 
I don't know if it is that simple as "Corp farming is ruining the country."
I think the bigger issues of more population, higher fuel prices, more trade and failing states oversees such as what has happened in Zimbabwe may be a bigger issue. Not that I want to see the family farm go by the wayside but just maybe some of those family farms that became Corporation farms and made things or kept things successful in production just might be very important to all of us in the future of feeding this world. I remember an agriculture program a number of years ago where they were interviewing some guy that seemed very knowledgable on China. When he was asked if the average Chinese man or woman had ten extra dollars what would they buy? The answer was ----------------FOOD! How many Chinese are there now let alone the rest of the people in the world and how many are there going to be in twenty years? You do the math. I think we need to really evaluate tax laws to help the family farm stay in business and also reconize the importance of the Corp farm as well for all of our future. There is a place and need for both.
 
The problem with Corp farming is that unlike family farmers when a bad year comes along they just pass the lost on to the consummer where the family farmer absorbs it. If the big corps run the family farmer out of business then you can really expect to see food prices rise A LOT. Then there is the conservation end of it and I have no faith in the corp farm to provide habitat,it will be MAX usage of the land they own damm the wildlife.

Just my 2 cents worth.
 
A corp farm is still growing a crop and selling it to the market. There is no way they can just pass the loss on to the consumer. They sell to an elevator or processor just like a family farmer does and they get what the market bears. The corp farms may be better at marketing the crop they grow but the family farm has the same opportunity at the market. The big meat producing farms will be able to get a steady contract with a packer but they also never get the high prices we see at the same time they don't get the lows either. Atleast they shouldn't if the are managed well.

The big problem is the paper markets that allow outside interests to trade commoditities on paper without having any intention of ever taking ownership of the actual commoditity whether it is agricultural crops or oil. These artificially inflated markets boosted by a weak dollar, is what causes your food and gas to go up in price. It has very little to do with actual supply and demand anymore. If you want to place blame, blame the traders. I am a firm believer that we would be better off if you were going to buy and sell commoditities you had to be a producer or a user and the ones you sold you had to deliver and the ones you bought you had to take delivery of.
 
When only a few company's control all our food. The competition is gone from the market. Most of the food grown by Corp farming is contract grown. They are guaranteed their price. It's been in the news all over the place. The era of cheap food is over. The days of rural living are coming to a close. These large Corp farm operations bull doze every farm stead when they buy the property. People will be forced to live in small towns or large cities. The chances of you buying a 40 or 80 acre place out in the bird belt are going by the way side. Those days are all but gone. Most land in the bird hunting belt now sells in 160 at the smallest and those are few and far between. Oh, there's some small 10 acre places here and there but what's 10 acres? Nothing...too small to have any real hunting. Bare 80 acre crop land can bring near $200,000 or more easy now in farmland country. Most stuff is way larger and selling for $500,000 on up into the millions.

People should be alarmed, but their not even paying attention. Too busy with all of today's struggles in everyday life to notice what's happening. You should check out America's biggest land owners. Ted Turner tops the list with over 2 million acres. WTH does any one man need with 2 million acres? There's another guy who owns 50 miles along a single Hwy in Nevada or Utah it is I believe. Capitalism is broke when this kind of thing is going on, greed out of control. OK, OK, I'll get off my soap box.

In 20 years when you no longer can find a place to go hunt pheasants, maybe find this old post and see if I'm not right what I have posted here.

Later Gents.
 
Exactly onpoint, you are correct I'm afraid, and that doesn't even begin to cover all that is going on--try Monsanto--now that is scary. We are going to pass our place onto our son and he will hopefully keep it going.
 
96% of farms are family owned. Who are these big Corp farms that own the food supply?
 
moellermd said:
96% of farms are family owned. Who are these big Corp farms that own the food supply?
Click to expand...


http://www.cfra.org/resources/corporate_farming
Quote
"Corporate Farming

Industrial agriculture has been defined, even by its proponents, as a system where the farm owner, the farm manager and the farm worker are different people. That's a dramatic change from the historic structure of agriculture, where the people who labor in farming also make the decisions and reap the profits of their work.

Corporate farming leads to closed markets where prices are fixed not by open, competitive bidding, but by negotiated contracts, and where producers who don't produce in large volumes are discriminated against in price or other terms of trade.

A healthy and stable community depends not on the number of livestock being produced, but on the number of livestock producers living and working there. The Center works to create genuine opportunity for family farms and ranches.

We educate the public about the consequences of industrialization and corporate farming through our monthly newsletter.

Read more in the link.

http://farm.ewg.org/

Check out just how big the top recipient's of farm subsidies are in any state, even county by county.

Just a example, here's Arkansas

Rank Recipient
(* ownership information available) Location Subtotal, Farming Subsidies
1995-2010
1 Riceland Foods Inc Stuttgart, AR 72160 $554,343,039
2 Producers Rice Mill Inc ∗ Stuttgart, AR 72160 $314,028,012
3 Tyler Farms ∗ Helena, AR 72342 $33,896,481
4 R A Pickens And Son Company ∗ Pickens, AR 71662 $14,124,391
5 Wabash Farms ∗ Helena, AR 72342 $11,282,484
6 Benwood Farms ∗ Earle, AR 72331 $11,080,537
7 Soudan Farming Co ∗ Marianna, AR 72360 $10,136,579
8 Big-mo Farm Partnership ∗ Stuttgart, AR 72160 $9,718,965
9 Hawkins Farms ∗ Leachville, AR 72438 $9,190,725
10 Lockley Brothers ∗ Parkin, AR 72373 $8,677,121
11 Bobby Roark & Sons Partnership ∗ Lake Village, AR 71653 $8,521,698
12 M & M Farm - Marr ∗ Hickory Ridge, AR 72347 $8,349,693
13 Henderson Land & Cattle Co ∗ Altheimer, AR 72004 $7,734,711
14 Catron Farms ∗ Helena, AR 72342 $7,632,731
15 Don Eifling & Son Farms ∗ Grady, AR 71644 $7,497,744
16 Yocum Farms ∗ Dermott, AR 71638 $7,478,134
17 Storey Farming ∗ Marvell, AR 72366 $7,476,188
18 Victoria Partnership ∗ Osceola, AR 72370 $7,365,857
19 Four Star Partnership ∗ Portland, AR 71663 $7,203,300
20 Agri Ventures ∗ Texarkana, AR 71854 $7,164,214

That's right, Riceland foods has received over 554 MILLLION in farm subsidies since 1995. One single farm operation.

These are all Corp farms..far from any family farm. They dominate every state. Just click on any state on the map
 
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I guess I do not understand what your point is. Almost all farms in the US are family owned. Your example of Riceland foods is interesting because it is cooperative the is owned by individual farmers. Much like any elevator that you find. Are you suggesting that we ban cooperatives? Everyone says that the big bad coorperate farms are running everything but the facts say otherwies.
 
I just presented the facts. How you choose to interpret them is your business. If you consider Riceland foods a "Family" farm. I guess you and I have a different opinion of just what a family farm is. My wife and I belong to a cooperative, our local farm service(feed store). I in no way consider it "Family" owned. Can you please post your source on your statistics, that 96% of farms are still family owned. My opinion of family owned and operated is, when the owner loves on the property and gets up each morning and works the ground/livestock himself. A guy in a suit that drives around in a fancy car. Who goes to meetings and may live 100s of miles from the operation, is not family owned and run.

I will quote my self again

Quote
""Corporate Farming

Industrial agriculture has been defined, even by its proponents, as a system where the farm owner, the farm manager and the farm worker are different people. That's a dramatic change from the historic structure of agriculture, where the people who labor in farming also make the decisions and reap the profits of their work."

Ok, I did my own searching. I see where you get the 96% statistic. Hardly what I would consider a true number that shows even what is farming. A person that raises a $1,000 worth of crop/livestock is considered a farm? Not in my mind. They are not even a blip on the radar screen. Besides the fact, a single Corp operation operates so much more land then any single family farm. Yet they both show up as the same statistic.Someone/multi owned operation that operates 20,000 acres or more controls access and the market far more then the single family owned operation.

Here IMO was only a fair sized operation in today's farming world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD_qRJEWneA

The kind of operation that I'm talking about. This one got caught cheating the U.S. government on crop insurance. Family owned? maybe you could consider it that. Still big enough to make a real dent in a area as far as land access for hunters and control of the local economy. Pretty hard for the common family farmer to compete with operations like these. Along with access to hunting land. These operations control and drive land prices..and food prices IMO. The couple who were considered owners avoided avoided jail time by giving up everything in a government auction.

They operated 20,000 acres of wheat. That's 31.25 sections of land, which are a mile X a mile and they are just one operation and count in your 96% family owned farm statistic just as much as the guy who only produced $1,000 of farm product.
 
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You are correct that some of the family operations are quite large. But why does that make them big and evil? My point is this. We are constantly talking about how big cooperate farms are the down fall of us all. That leaves the impression that when people see large operations they are some evil beast. They are more than likely family owned operations.

I know plenty of small farming operations that are worse for the enviornment than any of the big guys. At least the large operations have to have manure management plans ect. The smaller operations fly under the radar.

I do not that Riceland Food farms anything. They appear to be a cooperative.
 
moellermd said:
You are correct that some of the family operations are quite large. But why does that make them big and evil? My point is this. We are constantly talking about how big cooperate farms are the down fall of us all. That leaves the impression that when people see large operations they are some evil beast. They are more than likely family owned operations.

I know plenty of small farming operations that are worse for the enviornment than any of the big guys. At least the large operations have to have manure management plans ect. The smaller operations fly under the radar.

I do not that Riceland Food farms anything. They appear to be a cooperative.
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The point of this thread was SD land prices. Go to a land auction and compete against these giants. Who do you think has a thicker wallet(more available credit/government operating money)? They will just pass on the high costs of the land to any and all consumers down the line.

Lets just face it, we disagree. I would have rather seen 30 farms on that 20,000 acres, you see nothing wrong with what amounts to concentrated wealth owning much of the property. Too big to fail? Diamond Ring wasn't. It's called putting all our eggs in one basket, a monopoly. We use to have laws against this very thing. IMO, we need them reinstated. The American dream of owning your own land will be nothing but that..a "Dream"
 
Onpoint I agree with you on what you are saying the large farms. It's happening around where I live too. I myself would like to buy more ground.But the big farmers have put the price of ground so high that I can't afford to do it. There is feed mill not far from me that buys a farm every year to use as a tax write off. The last I heard they own more than 8,000 acres. About 3 years ago they bought at least 10,000 acres in Africa and they was going to put a fence around it and hire people to take care of it.
 
I read this thread which is becoming a debate between two of my favorite posters, so I thought I'd chime in, as an admirer of both, Onpoint, and Moellermd. I think the disconnect between corporate farming and a family operation is largely a percieved difference by the public observer, and not a real difference. Corporations bear the tag, justified or not that they are completely souless, short-term profit driven to the detriment of all other considerations. Certainly we have ample examples in all commercial pursuits of that! Many farm "corporations", are family held, and not publicly traded, and owned by the people who work the farm. It is a method by which the family can, limit liability, control inheritance, and of course take advantage of the tax laws. One overiding issue is financing, allowing a family corporation to do the actual farming, allows the landowners in title to effectively lease the ground for cash, to the corporation, providing a provable income stream, so the nitwit bankers can figure out how to make a loan! I suspect that as far as counting heads there are a large percentage of farms which would count as both corporate and family owned. I am sure that these people are as concerned with the long term viability of their ground, the ground they live on, or have historic roots to, as any other farmer ever had. We wax nostalgic over the days of 160@ and 80@ family farms of our grandfathers, but the facts are today that those days and those people are gone. You can't sustain the level of living we have all become accustomed to, on a parcel of this size, without growing opium poppies or hemp! Besides it's hard work, and nobody wants to break their back just to celebrate the first indoor toilet, running water in the house, or rural electricification, after years of toil. Are there "bad" corporate farmers, sure. Just as there are bad individual operators. Pressure to produce more and more income on all operators squeeze the margin to sustain wildlife. I'm afraid that if wildlife doesn't prove to be an economic benefit, as well as an esthetic benefit, we will continue to see a decline in hunting opportunities no matter who owns the ground. The debate over the way the ground is held is a side show diversion, taking our attention away from the real issue. I'd love to have a solution to the issues that are diminishing the opportunities to enjoy wingshooting, but I have none. I fear we are all dinosaurs, playing out our disappearing role. It scares me. I think hunting will continue for the few who are willing to spend the time, effort, and money, to seek the sport, but on a much smaller scale than we have now, and a whisper of what we had 50 years ago, when every other backyard had a kennel of birddogs. As we age and retire from the scene, we lose political clout, nuances of the sport, skills passed on from generation to generation. I have had farmers tell me they miss the big influx of hunters they used to get, that doubled the size of small towns, and brought new people with interesting stories to towns. I hunted last year opening day in Missouri, and never saw another bird hunter, or heard a shot other than my own. For a while I thought it was the wrong day! Just like small farming, upland hunting is to much work, and to time consuming for the computer driven younger generation of instant gratification. Maybe thats where we failed.
 
too many kids will never see or experience a sunrise or the sounds of whistling wings in a duck blind, the flush of a pheasant under a dog or the silhouette of a big deer on the horizon against the last light of day.

all of this is priceless and does not require even a shot to be fired or an animal harvested.....kids that miss this will never understand the need for man to hunt or spend time observing creatures in the wild. they will only understand what some liberal hack teaches them in school! :(
 
I don't think we will in the forseeable future get back to the good old days, However the sooner we get the government out of ag the more family farms will survive. Crop insurance needs to be reformed. It is a tool for the crooks.
We had a guy that tried to collect on his neighbors corn field that was cut for silage. The local county commitee reported it to the crop insurance officials. As far as I know nothing happened. Had there been a mandatory $100000 fine and 2 years in prison that kind of thing would stop. Crop insurance is a great thing but there has to be some teeth to it. I know the government gives us CRP and if we can afford it that is fine. Farmers would be better farmers if the government money was greatly reduced. So it was just farming the land and not farming the USDA. I am a farmer with three kids that would like to be involved in ag.
 
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