Making money farming??

   / Making money farming?? #1  

chuckcoug

Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2005
Messages
45
Tractor
B7800
I was wondering if any of you farm with your tractor. I live on 5 acres. The last two years I have farmed 1 acre. I mostly gave the good produce away. The hard part was dealing with the bugs, etc. Still learning as I didn't use any pesisides. I know, I can sell the items with easy if I can get a good crop. Anyway the reason for this post is I am in the process of buying a bigger tractor and I am trying to figure ways to make some money with it.

Here are a couple of questions. I hope they are not to personal to share. If need be you can send me a message.

What jobs have you used the tractor for that you made money? About how much did you make and how long did it take?

Planting Vegetable or Flowers what crop do you make money from? How many acres of that crop to you farm? About how much can you make per acre from this crop?{Gross or Net}

I really thank you for your responses and I know that there are a lot of variables. Location, Expenses, Time, Crop Production, etc. But maybe this will give me a few ideas.
 
   / Making money farming?? #2  
I've been looking at the same issue myself.

For 100 years or more, the advice to farmers has been "get big or get out." The farmers I know (in SE New England) have other jobs. The question is not how to make money, but how to keep it an affordable hobby. In general, there is less money to be made with a tractor by farming than by helping the area become suburbanized -- clearing land, digging septic systems and landscaping.

The big farms are called "factory farms" for a reason. For you with your 5 acres to compete growing corn or beef with some guy with 10,000 acres in Iowa -- or Argentina or South Africa -- is as audacious as saying that you're going to build sedans in your garage to compete with the big three automakers. But before you get too discouraged, let's take that analogy a little further. There are literally millions of people who make a living in the automobile business as sole proprietors -- they just don't go head-to-head with Ford and Chevy.

There are two main ways to compete with the big factories. One is to grow something so specialized that the market is to tiny for the big guys to bother with. Examples that come to mind are things like goat cheese, superfine wool, wine grapes, and gourmet organic vegetables. Another way is to provide something that doesn't travel, like a service, so you're only competing with your immediate geographic area. For instance, some people around here believe that raw goat milk helps with allergies, but it's basically illegal to sell it. What's not illegal is to sell someone a goat, and agree to board their goat on your land, charge them to milk it everyday, and deliver to them the milk that is produced. Let's see some guy in Argentina compete with that.

It will take some work and investigation, as well as trial-and-error, to find out what works for you. What's clear is that they days when you could just grow what everyone else in your area grows and make a decent living are long gone.
 
   / Making money farming?? #3  
If you can sell organic at the end of your driveway you can make money that way. Organic has gotten big and fetches lots of money. If it's not organic it will still be a lot fresher than junk we buy in the store. I started growing chickens last summer and could easily make money doing it. No tractor needed. In Wisconsin I raised 100 chickens for 1.30 a pound and sell all I want for 2.00. The neighbor gets 2.50. Save a bunch for yourself cause it's the best chicken you will ever eat. (cornish cross) Also have a 7510 with Howard rotto tiller and have a 40 by 100 garden, plan to double it next year but won't sell the food, just eat it. Also, I'm planting an acre or two of hybridpoplar in hopes to have a nice woods for firewood in 10 years. I can also trim the branches and take the last 10 inches of the twigs and hope to sell or replant them. They are called cuttings. they grow 5 to 8 feet per year but need to be sprayed or tilled to cut down on weeds. This is kind of like farming I guess. I also rotto till other peoples gardens for a small price, my sister in law has a landscape company and I charge her 200 dollars a day for it or I sometimes just help out at the sight for 200 dollars a half day. I'm also a self employed carpenter and use my Kubota 7510 and charge between 150 and 200 dollars extra per day because it beats the heck out of filling a dumpster with a wheel barrow. One more thing I do, I cut grass for my church. It is 24 ac of grass, I do this for God because he's done so much for me, but I'm allowed by law to "lease" the tractor for a daily rental. I don't charge the church but 20 rentals @ 250 dollars per day came to a 5000 dollar tax write off on my schedule A cause it's none profit. Good luck making money with your tractor! Also, anything I borrow to the church can count as a rental, chainsaws, wood splitters, trailors etc.
 
   / Making money farming??
  • Thread Starter
#4  
ihookem, quicksandfarmer

Thank you for your input. I know it take time to answer this type of question, but between both of your responses I have started thinking about some new way of using the tractor.

Organic for a higher price sound good to me. I just have to figure out how to keep the bugs from eating it. Aphids really took a tool on my crop last year.

I also like the idea of maybe using it for tilling, discing for other people. I think I could make some extra money. It would probably be wise to look into some type of liability insurance. But I would think it would be cheap.

I hope other will give their input. I know I will probably not make enought to pay for the tractor, but at least a little will help.

chuck
 
   / Making money farming?? #5  
Trying to make a buck or just being able to support having your equip will vary greatly depending upon where you live. As been said, you need to find a need and fill it.

Several decades ago I had a small custom haying business. Was able to pay for the equip and put a few extra $$ in my pocket. My customers were people that had 5-10 acres of grass but couldn't afford the cost of the equip to hay it. I filled the need.

Lots of farming around here. VERY diversified farming and not a single crop area. Food crops are on the decline and about half the food processors have left the area in last 2 decades. What is on the rise is nursery stock production. People will pay a lot more for a small shrub than same area can produce with a food crop. Also have a number of flower "farms" specializing in growing and selling the plants and some flower sales for added bonus. Large Rose farm with more about 1500 varieties. Two large Iris farms including largest in nation. Largest in nation Dhilia farm, 40 acres. Down the road is a farm that raises arba-vita and trains and trims them into shape, topiary (sp?) which sell for big bucks. Also have a lot of veggie stock nurseries that sell veggie plants to the hobby farmer in the spring. Also popular are you-pick veggie farms. Raise the crop and the customer does the harvesting and will pay as much of more than store prices.

Find a viod and fill it if you can.
 
   / Making money farming?? #6  
We have been in the vegetable business for four years now. The first year we had one acre and grossed about $3500. Then decided that was not worthwhile to sit at farmers market for the amount of produce that we had to sell.

The next year we purchased some additional land. We planted 40 acres, grossed about $700 per acre. Each year total sales have gone down as we are planting fewer acres, The gross sales per acre have stayed about the same. This last year was really tough with no rain and extreme heat, even with watering a lot of things did not make it. Very few potatoes, no beets, carrots, tomatoes and the peppers were very late.

Organic farming is very labor intensive and that is why the gross per acre has dropped considerably from one acre and multiplying it by 40. The first year with the larger acreage we had help from my daughter, son, brother wife and I. Now it is just my brother, sister, wife and I.

We net about 10K per year on a cash basis without regards to any interest, payments, or depreciation. The labor is all free retired labor. On the tax return, it has been a loss every year, not planned that way, but that is the way it is turning out. When considering the fact that I put more hours in between planting time and the end of the season than most people put in on their jobs during an entire year, the return is not great.

I have not even mentioned the specialized equipment that I have had to purchase to make the operation viable, potato planter, potato digger, transplanter, mulch layer, vacuum seeder, vegetable washer, this and some probably missed is in addition to the tractors and normal tillage equipment. Do not forget the wells, piping, portable irrigation equipment, which is needed as well as the drip line and mulch that must be purchased every year.

In the long run, when we are done, we will show a profit with the sale of the land and equipment. After the equipment is more depreciated, the bottom line will be in the black.

As far as selling the produce with ease, forget it. You will not sell all that you can produce if you have a good year. You have to have a market for it. There are some days where a person could sell a hundred dozen corn and others where you are lucky to sell ten dozen. It all depends upon the amount of people coming to the farmers market and who else is selling there that day. Corn as an example, we have one vendor who depending upon the day of the week, can sell 40 to 150 dozen of corn within a couple of hours. He is well known, does not have any extra protein in his corn as he uses pesticides, but his corn does not taste like corn to me, too sweet. I prefer the SE corn which still tastes like corn to me.

Each market is going to be different. But remember that produce farming is a lot of work, keeping it small cuts down the equipment costs, but does not yield the volume, going larger costs lots of money.
 
   / Making money farming?? #7  
Want to make a million dollars farming... start with two million.

mark
 
   / Making money farming?? #8  
The economics of small-scale farming are tough. It's working if you say it's working. That means if you are ok with donating the labor it will return the out-of pocket expenses. Or if you donate the expenses, it will return the cost of the labor. But it will not, cannot, has not in many years, turned anything like a profit if you capture all your real costs as dollar values. The key is having the clear recognition up front that in choosing it as a hobby or lifestyle, you are willing to make a substantial contibution to it without expecting it to be returned, except by quality of life. If you take your pay as being happy at what you do, seeing your work produce something tangible in your life, then it works just fine. As the old phrase goes, the way to make a small fortune in farming is to start with a large fortune.

There's a great book "Three Farms" by Mark Kramerthat describes the economics of farming on three scales - small family dairy herd, partners raising animals for meat, and corporate industrial farming of vegetables. Nice piece of work.

It doesn't look good for making a profit these days at small-scale anything - but that doesn't mean it can't be fun to do.
 
   / Making money farming?? #10  
MessickFarmEqu said:
To do it small, niche is the key. Mini-bales, organic, beef straight to the butcher, that kinda thing.

and i see your day jobs listed in your sig........tractor sales/computer support :)
 

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