Let's say after 30 years of pure blood, sweat & tears. You've decided it's time to end your shift and enjoy your money while you still have a fair amount of energy.
For some unexplained reason, you have a few acres of land. Great area in terms of transport, soil and water access.
Would you ever take up farming as a hobby/business?
For those who said "yes": What would be your game plan?
For those who said "no": What would you rather do with the land?
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Sure. I love fresh fruits and vegetables.
heister you're up
me and my cus gonna start a beet farm
Can't beet that. Or can you?
Damn it, Mose!
Couple of questions?
How many acres? Region of the country? Bankroll? Experience? Desire?
These questions are in opposite order of importance.
uhh last i checked this was wall street oasis not farm street oasis
Not sure why I'm getting so many down votes. How many future farmers does he expect to find on this site?
Last time I checked this was Off-Topic.
Ever thought about starting a farm? (Originally Posted: 02/03/2017)
Let's say after 30 years of pure blood, sweat & tears. You've decided it's time to end your shift and enjoy your money while you still have a fair amount of energy.
For some unexplained reason, you have a few acres of land. Great area in terms of transport, soil and water access.
Would you ever take up farming as a hobby/business?
For those who said "yes": What would be your game plan?
For those who said "no": What would you rather do with the land?
Interesting, how much money would I need to start a farming business or a business that's heavily related to the farming business? and how would one start such a business?
I would rather do a cattle ranch since it's a part of the industry I would know a little better. It seems like a lot of ranches are break even operations unless you can really scale up and diversify and the only way to make money doing it is to buy a ranch that currently makes money. My game plan would be to buy a small established ranch with highway frontage near a small town and build something like a dollar store or an RV Park on the highway frontage piece to generate some extra cash-flow. After that, attempt to pick up some neighboring acres to scale up the cattle operations. So at the end of the day, if I ever have a ranch, it will probably be more of a hobby farm type deal.
I own farm land now, I rent it out. If you think your 30 years of working in finance is blood sweat and tears you won't cut it as a farmer. You will be nothing more than a glorified gardener. Harsh? Yes, however the life of a farmer is far more difficult than anything you have ever done selling equities.
Nice, care to share a bit more about your farm?
Aren't you the infamous billionaire on this forum?
The honest truth, love it!
Personally I would turn it into a motor sports playground and have a bunch of sheep for no good reason. Like they would be obstacles on a go kart track or something.
Moo Moo Farm from Mario Kart?
Tree farms for the win. The cost of lumber has sored recently (up ~25% since 2011ish), making new builds of starter homes too expensive
Let's say the trees took 10 years to grow (I'm being generous). Is it really worth it?
Of course you can plant year after year so that more keep coming, but your first batch would arrive after 10 years.
There can be good money in lumber. However, you are never going to make the full price unless you bring them to market your self. My family has a small company that harvests from our land and the fact that these trees were valuable is just luck. Nobody had the forsite to plant them.
You don't really "farm" for construction grade lumber. You clear cut and replant that. Where the real money is in tree farming is for old growth hard wood. It's a type of farming that requires an extreme amount of vigilance and requires 365 days a year work. There is a large black market for stolen hardwoods. So much so that hardwood poachers use silenced chainsaws. Growth period is roughly 40 years but, the value per board foot of lumber is 10 to 20X depending on the type.
I've wanted to start a winery for years now. Something satisfying with growing something. I'd consider it an expensive hobby though.
Where at?
I'd just sell it. My soft hands were made for keyboard shortcuts, not farming...
No. Not even once.
But thought about buying small vacation house lakeside, in mountains or seaside many many times.
I grew up on a farm, man. It's not all it's built up to be.
But I'm sure your experience taught you some important lessons that not many have learnt (and gave you good attributes).
The Walking Dead fan here. I would build a real life size nuclear-apocalypse-zombie-proof safe house that is good to go. And another as a museum for entertainment sell walking dead theme merchandise and would also include a walking dead theme hotel.
It is off topic but I would really love to live off the grid one day (bit like the doomsday prepers). Somewhere quiet but with a wealth of natural resources to live off. I mean how much satisfaction would you get from knowing you physically support your own existence, especially after working in the world of finance
Just like in the movies, I believe someone in the 21st century would go nuts doing this. Some preppers are clearly insane and they haven't even started.
Almonds or truffles. Very lucrative businesses.
Easy to grow? Are prices stable enough in the long term to make this viable?
Own the land, rent it, and enjoy it for recreational activities. 4wheeling, snowmobiling, hunting, horses (lots of work) and maybe small hobby farm.
I think the concept of hydroponic farming is pretty cool. You could locate yourself near a more urban area than most farms since you can go vertical with hydroponics. By being closer to the cities you have a larger market and could cut down on shipping costs. I'd grow the specialty stuff like kale and arugula for their higher margins
I really miss doing physical labor. I worked labor jobs my whole life up until my junior year of undergrad. Love being outside all day, constant tan, can eat anything because you're burning so many more cals. Plus I just like at the end of the day where my body feels like I was out there doing something, it feels like I physically earned that paycheck. Now when I go home or when I first get to the gym after work my body legit feels like I just got out of bed. If I could make the same amount of money working manual labor I would do it in a heart beat.
To answer the farm question I would without a doubt start a pot farm. Huge growth potential long term.
I'm right there with you. For a few years I worked summer jobs in a factory that made high-end furniture. Truly back breaking work, working from 6am-5pm everyday moving 150+ lb sofas around made me hate people who complain about how hard their office jobs are. You're IB job might be 'hard', but in reality it's not. There was also no AC inside the warehouse in NC summers, but you could dip and spit inside which was a neat perk.
Those summers I was the most lean and fit I have ever been, but I did have back problems for about 4 months following each summer gig.
This is my goal for retirement. I'm hoping to work until I'm about 50 then buy a ranch in the middle of nowhere with all cash. Then I'm investing in a herd of bison since they're easier to care for than cattle and taste pretty fucking good. A condo in Phoenix or SF would be where I spend a few long weekends away. I should also mention that I'll be buying whiskey by the barrel for those great quiet ranch nights. Being able to spend your days outdoors in the beautiful plains while continuing to receive income is my ideal retirement.
My grandfather left me a 60-acre working beet farm. I run it with my cousin Mose. We sell beets to the local stores and restaurants. It’s a nice little farm ... sometimes teenagers use it for sex.
No. My aunt and uncle were farmers, so me and my sister had to visit them for 2-3 weeks every summer. It fucking sucked. You work all day, from sunrise to sundown, and often beyond.
Both my cousins became farmers, but that's all they've ever known. I respect their decisions, and that's what they love doing...but I wouldn't touch it with a 10 feet pole.
But with that said, there are many different types of farms, and in various sizes. So I guess it also depends on your goals.
Short answer: No waaaaaaaaaay.
Long answer (for business opp): Too many personal barriers to entry. I may have some land but overall:
Start up costs seem high (machinery, seeds, etc).
Can't imagine margins are that exciting, especially on two acres worth of output. Quick google search seems to indicate the avg farm is ~440 acres (per the Census of Agricultural Data).
Too much competition as is. Unless I had some new method of planting/extracting/whatever that gave me a serious competitive advantage, can't see myself out performing people that have been born and raised in farming.
Personal reason:
I don't consider spending my early years of retirement doing long, hard, manual labor the most gratifying way to spend my time or money. I'd much rather travel the world!
In summation:
Waaaaaay too much money and effort for such little reward. If I wanted to do it as a hobby, I think a square yard would be enough to keep me content lol maybe grow my own coffee beans or something (no idea what environmental conditions are needed for that, though).
But then again, I'm just a city kid that doesn't know shit about farming :)
Somewhat, microfarms are actually far more productive per acre than industrial farms. Also microfarms can focus on product that actually has high market value unlike industrial farms that rely solely on volume. I have met people that clear a 100K a year farming on 5 acres, granted they are growing organic greens for high end restaurants but it is possible.
Appreciate the perspective
If you have ever planted a seed, waited for it to grow and bear fruit and eaten the harvest, it is quite incredible.
Its simple, but perfect.
No. Not until you have enough acreage to safely land an RV4 or Mooney M20F.
Until then you should not be running around asking a bunch of wall street bankers from midtown manhattan if it's a good idea to start a farm.
Anyone else ever look at big ranch/farm type properties around the country that cost millions of dollars and fantasize about buying them? No just me?
Current favorite:
I would have a boner for life if I lived there.
Pro tip: take a Sudafed if you have a boner that won't go away (multi-hour boner)
I know someone who got an entrepreneur bachelors (those are a real thing now), bought a little bit of land and is growing lettuce. Mostly through hydroponics that he built in a green house in his backyard.
He now sells that lettuce to a few small outlets and our university with roughly (15K UG). All in All he did pretty good and didn’t have any background besides being from the South.
Honestly, those entrepreneur degrees are not bad. I can't speak from personal experience, but I've known a few who achieved them and they are some of the most driven people I know. I think a huge factor for most people is that they are view starting a business as too risky - those that I knew had no fear whatsoever of doing so.
I can agree to this- to a certain extent. I love the idea of startups and creating opportunities based around simplified problem solving but when I was in the Living Center at my Uni for Entrepreneurs, it didn’t seem like too bright of a degree. Perhaps this is my experience from going to a slightly expensive school to learn how to be an entrepreneur, or perhaps this I should because most ent’s are individuals who don’t like traditional education/haven’t had the chance to attend.
Increase your yield per acre and put a couple of these puppies all over:
https://www.freightfarms.com/
Only thing worth growing these days is Marijuana.
Yes, THC is fantastic. SB.
Probably should grow some fruits when you get the munchies though. Maybe something exotic like pineapple trees and mango trees.
I have some buddies that went banking -> pe -> early retirement / entrepreur that recently invested non-op in some legal pot farms. Interested to see how it pans out for him. They are vertically integrated with ~5 retail storefronts in Oregon / Washington (one or both I forget)
I grew up on a smallish farm in Central IL that we sharecropped. It is brutal, endless work. If you think banking is hard work/non-stop, try being a farmer.
The real question here is about scale. If you have tens or hundreds of millions to buy a corporate farm or big Western ranch, that could be cool. You hire people with experience and act as CEO. If you want to buy a couple hundred acres and try to do it yourself, run away.
Was back home over the holidays and talked to a buddy who just started farming on his family property, he put it to me best, farming is a way "to live poor, and die rich" with the assumption that you start with a few acres and slowly buy/lease more and more. It is some generational money though, if you build up a few hundred/thousand acres, your kids kids kids will be thanking you.
My parents are doing exactly this, both of them after long careers in finance.
Having also worked a lot on a farm in my life, I have this to say:
It's hard work, if not dangerous, too, to do alone;
It is not a financially sustainable venture on the scale you are talking about, unless you finagle some niche relationship with bourgeoisie Michelin restaurants;
It requires constant presence, and is a full time job;
It will wear you down fast.
I just read an article the other day about city folk dreaming about living of the fat o' the land and setting up a farm, and how they disproportionately end up with a hand degloved or an arm torn off by a tractor PTO, legs crushed by potato harvesters, necks snapped by rolling tractors, whole bodies wrapped around combine heads, etc. Anyone who spends a few minutes on Liveleak will see what I mean -- all it takes is one unbuttoned sleeve a little too close to spinning machinery and your life changes -- or ends -- in an instant.
Yeah. Did a lot of farm work growing up, which involved heavy machinery. We all worked very carefully and responsibly , and still have the following stories:
Tractor tipped over due to front loader being unbalanced. Nobody was injured but could've been fatal.
Someone's finger got crushed by a 24 psq logsplitter.
Had multiple chainsaws kick while hitting a rock or piece of wire embedded in a log. No injuries but that can be a limb right there.
Miscellaneous knife injuries.
Spinal damage from falling off ladders.
Etc
For anyone who is considering "getting into" farming, I highly, highly recommend seeking tutelage from someone who does it full time. There's a lot of safety stuff that you need to look out for that you just won't be aware of without someone telling you.
I wouldn't grow crops but would certainly ranch cattle or bison or something. I can't imagine playing golf and having 2pm beers every day for 30 years, so I'm planning on some kind of active retirement once I can start a ranch with cash. Bison are relatively low maintenance and are hardy enough to leave behind for some time away on a beach. A sustainable heard on a beautiful ranch with a second home somewhere warm is the dream.
No. I sucked at FarmVille.
The only farm I've been part of was in the bullpen at my first BB. As an analyst they planted me in a cubicle, and harvested my hopes and dreams.
And now you are just an empty shell...
As a matter of fact, I've seriously played with the notion. It would be a major entrepreneurial gig. A pretty pathetic cliche for my sex, but I'd definitely take a stab at developing a full-fledged flower farm. In particular, one specializing in unique heirloom cut-flower varieties. Commercial possibilities are pretty stellar.
No major funding at first. Begin with a try-out. Start a tilled plot of the distinct cut flora. If successful, sell off bouquets of whatever comes to fruition at local farm stands, give them to neighbors, etc. Stimulate a word-of-mouth as to the uniqueness of the stock. After a year or two expand the offering and work to secure distributional deals with local and regional grocers.
Meanwhile, keep building the "sizzle" via social media and alluring flower and bouquet photography. Invite florists to give public styling workshops on the farm (charge for the events) while in tandem build relationships with the florists for wedding and special events deals, and leveraging their customer base as public outreach.
Lastly, and perhaps mot importantly, the great thing about flowers is that they're highly reproductive. Work the would-be popularity of the bouquet/flower "sizzle" to start an online shop offering a selection of the unique heirlooms (in limited quantities to bump the prices). And great part is there will be plenty of seeds, roots and bulbs to go around without any loss to your crop.
Chances of all this working out are not altogether minuscule. Many people have done it. Insane labor, capital and commitment to be involved in this? Yes. But you can start out small and see if you can make it work.
My take anyway.
Whew. Sounds exhausting. Love it.
Nice plan, but you have nothing in there on actually growing the things.
Farming is not like a white collar business, where the product is advice and advice is malleable /adaptable to the situation. In farming, your crops either grow or wither, and the factors which determine that are about 30% in your control.
The biggest determinants of your success that are outside your control will be:
-Land quality -Weather conditions -Force majeure events like pestilence, disease, etc.
The biggest determinants of your success that are inside your control will be:
-Land maintenance (mowing lawns, killing moles and weeds, generally pushing back against nature's constant pressure to reclaim your land)
-Crop maintenance (pruning in the spring, spraying with pesticide/fungicide/roundup, crop rotation, depending on the scale of operation, etc).
Let me be clear that what is within your control is a full time job and is back breaking work, and still, it composes only about 30-40% of the factors that will ultimately determine your success. I have worked very hard on these 30-40% of factors all year only to have the crop go to waste come harvest because of an unexpected, once-a-decade type of pest emerging in the region.
I'm not trying to be a negative nelly - just pointing out that the business you are proposing, even when you leave all the business aspects aside and focus solely on the farming itself, is more than a full time job, is very difficult to nail down in a reproducible way without past experience, and even then, will hinge largely on factors exogenous to your business model.
Flowers in particular are very temperamental plants, and the nicer ones are very difficult to grow in a commercial way. There is a reason that business agriculture generally has become pyramidal and concentrated in the hands of a few families which have been doing it for generations and can turn their talents on a large scale.
I appreciate your input. However, as it so happens, I have actual experience in flower-growing and I can fully say that your logic is not only flawed but is based on a sampling of common-known cliches:
"There is a reason that business agriculture generally has become pyramidal and concentrated in the hands of a few families which have been doing it for generations and can turn their talents on a large scale." - If you know anything about growing flowers, vegetables, etc. you will be fully aware that families like Monsanto are becoming a thing of the (unsustainable, unhealthy) past. There are hundreds, if not thousands of small sustainable family farms in the most remote and harshest of regions and climates, without millions of dollars in capital and a mass labor force, that have become successful in achieving commercial triumph.
Basically, they started with a pack of seeds and a compost bin on the backyard. And yes, some people are NOT afraid to work physically and leverage financial training into overcoming a challenge, and become a strong manager.
In the end, patronizing is not needed on the subject.
Another option to slowly build into farming is to rent out the land to an established farmer. Most of the time you are able to work out a contract for cash rent and then a percentage of the harvest.
Growing up in Western KS, I know that starting a grain farm out here is tough due to the capital needed. Most farms are generational and passed down. Even just taking up ranching can be very hands on and essentially another job but is very rewarding.
Yes, cattle farm.
Used to be you could just ranch until someone came along and paid you to drill for oil. Those opportunities are getting fewer and farther between though. Maybe some hope for this internationally when the EU gets their head out of their ass about fracking / the future of energy.
Also I feel like I have to say this:
Farming is one of the most scientifically advanced industries there is. If you want to run a farm that is anything but a huge money pit ("hobby") it takes a ton of extremely specialized biological / chemical knowledge. It literally takes a PhD to do well, and maybe two if you plan to do it on your own.
(Not to mention that there is literally no competing with a corporate farm as a mom & pop).
Just got the feeling reading through some of the comments and OP, that the idea was: after a long and lucrative career in finance, wouldn't it be nice to hang up the green-dollar-sign-suspenders and don the shit-kickers and cowboy hat and spend the rest of my days relaxing on the farm?
Sounds nice and all, but running a farm (particularly a small one) would be much more physically, mentally, financially, and operationally challenging than a 'typical' high-finance retirement of sitting on a couple corporate and charity boards and calling your financial advisor twice a year to make some stock picks and move some money around.
I've seriously considered this. In most states you'll need 5+ acres to get agricultural designation (unless you mean a small hobby farm). Do everything you can to avoid high taxes. Farms don't make much money. 1.5 acres is a bare minimum to for family sustainability & diversity. If you use the Swiss model and have good neighbors, .5 acres will do.
Regardless of scale, I'd make sure to keep bees (far from living quarters) and grow a small amount of hemp crop (legal in most states now). A modest chicken coop is pretty valuable too and low maintenance.
Talk to small farmers as well. Volunteer to help them with fence repair and seeding/harvesting once a month. There's no substitute for real experience. They know how to rotate crops for sustainability / soil quality (ie clover increases soil nitrogen). There are also some modern techniques for both irrigation and vertical farming worth looking up. You have to pay attention to water run off and consider a retaining wall and/or mm pond. Some water storage tanks or a digging a well are smart options too.
Lots of people grow soy and corn, but I'd stay away from any subsidized commercial crops. Oats and ancient grains can be worthwhile. However, I'd think about your favorite foods and grow specialty organic versions.
What's your plan?
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Hope I can help you
Check this for your topic
Hope you need it for star farm
Thanks for your help
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