Farmland’s Important Little Investment Secret

[SASKFARMER3]

Farmland’s Important Little Investment Secret
Brad Farquhar - Assiniboia Capital. Regina, Sask
This was a speaker at Manitoba Ag days.
Is it just me or do these guys not get farmers.
I own 80% of our farm and buy time were done hopefully all of it no rental land.
Seems buy the applause for speaker farmers in general feel like me this is a stupid idiotic way to look at farming. Our grandfathers left Europe to get away from such BS and now 100 years later they want us to go back. Sorry NO way.

[lesm]

SF3, I have the same beliefs you do. I will rent dirt only if I have a chance to buy it,otherwise I dont want it. Seems like most of these younger guys all want to farm 20000 acres, so they are selling off their most prized possesion (their land)in order to obtain the capital to do so. Gary Pike propaganda- what a shame!

[agstar77]

Don't you want to be a serf? As the size of farms goes up and the cost getting in rises, it is probable that the leeches will control the fixed asset of land.

[ado089]

Mcdonalds now owns more land then the catholic church, much of it prime realestate. That's not by accident. Renting land should be a tool maxamize machinery during times of expansion not a long term production plan, in my opinion.

[JDGreen]

absolutely the truth SF3. I want to own it all at the end of the day. I would rather go tits up trying to own it, than work like a serf payin that ass Brad Farquar.

[farmaholic]

Everyone needs to look at their own circumstances and decide what is best for their operation. In some areas it is near impossible to buy or rent land, competition is fierce. For a start up farm it is a way to acquire somemore acres that the operator otherwise couldn't afford to make the down payment and finance. In some areas the tenant is in the drivers seat and dictates rates/agreements and such. I myself don't like renting it but I still feel there is a place for it when circumstances dictate. I live in an area that is pretty competitive and acres don't go unfarmed, even in the tough years things always got rented out. I know tenants who farmed quite afew quarters for their landlord, and when land came up for sale had to compete with them to purchase it, ironic, they(landlord) didn't want to farm but wanted to own the appreciable asset(unlike the machinery it took to farm it). Now that things are pretty darn good the Landlord actually took it back and is going to do it themselves through hired men. Heaven forbid the Serf does better than the Landlord. When I asked the tenant what they would do if the landlord came back in five years and wanted to rent it to them again, all he did was extend his middle finger in the air. I sympathize with the tenant since they geared up to farm all these acres with large machinery, now they need to look for more to justify their equipment and remember it is pretty competitive for them. As long as the tenant were making a profit is all that mattered. In some cases there is a better return on investment to owning and renting ag land out than bank money and that helps keep the values up. I realize in the past it probably cost me more (per acre per year) to buy than it would have to rent the land I bought, but now it is mine, and don't have to deal with landlords. Remember it is all based on individual circumstances and differnt areas, it is hard to compare.

[fjlip]

The size of land holdings is a cycle that has been repeated over the centuries. I copied this post a while back...
"If we look at history over the last couple of thousand years we can see the same ancient pattern as the present situation.
The Roman republic over two thousand years ago gave their soldiers a parcel of land when they had completed their twenty years of service in the Roman army.
Of course many old soldiers were totally unsuited to farming and over a couple of centuries these small farms were acquired and built up into vast and not very productive estates controlled and owned by the immensely wealthy patricians and senators of the Roman ruling class.
When the chaos of Rome's collapse occurred around 476 the small holdings again appeared as the owners of the vast estates were kidnapped or killed or just became incompetent and unable to enforce their authority.
Repeated again through out Europe centuries later as the powerful war lords of the Dark Ages built up private armies and used peasants as little more than slaves to work their immense estates.
Then in a space of a few decades in repeated plagues, the Black Death killed a third of the European population and suddenly there were not enough workers to till the fields and grow the food so the peasants now called the tune and they just up and left for someone who would give them a better deal.
And so the great estates collapsed as debt created by the constant small wars and the resulting chaos destroyed the old system and again the estates were divided up by force if necessary into small holdings for the small farmers.

This was repeated again in the Middle Ages as the Roman church and monasteries acquired immense land holdings until again broken up by the Princes of the Reformation.

In England the public lands were taken over and "enclosed", a period called the "Enclosure", by the immensely wealthy families of England's landed gentry.
The so called Corn Laws were enacted in Parliament to force the population to buy very high priced local grain instead of the much cheaper imported grain which led to starvation and ugly food riots in London and other cities until the corn laws were repealed and the vast estates acquired during the "enclosure" were broken up and the land returned to the farmers and peasants.

In Australia we have seen this twice in the last century with large areas of public lands being surveyed into 320 to 640 acre blocks and the returning soldiers from the First World War being settled on those blocks.
It was for the most part a failure as again most of the returning soldiers were just not suited to farming.

Again following WW2, the returned servicemen were settled on blocks that resulted from the breaking up of the very large, many thousands of acres in size, sheep stations in south eastern Australia that were opened up and settled by the original squatters [ on public lands ] in the 1840's and 50's.
This soldier settlement schemes following WW2 were much better organized and many soldier settlers did quite well but again these blocks have steadily been amalgamated into ever larger properties.

Sometime in the unknowable future, some traumatic event[s] will occur and the governments of the day will realize that the great estates or corporate farms that have been built up over the decades will again have to be broken up and the land returned to the smaller farm enterprise if the greatest possible production of food is to be realized from the limited fertile global land resources available.

When that happens still lays far into the unknowable future but it will surely happen!"

[hedgehog]

the big estates still exist in britain, they now dont rent land out, so they contract farm(****) it every year.
they find some young guy, with a machinery buying fettish, screw some big payments out of him for a few yrs till they fall out or his gear is done, then move on to the next guy.
meanwhile no one looks after the soil, built up by our forefathers, and it is now in serious decline.

[Caveo]

hedgehog.. better still I have seen these Estates farmed by big investment companies (Fountain, Coop etc) using the very windbags that get up to speak at the likes of AgDays who couldn't find (farm) their way out of a paper bag. Seen some horrible messes, but what's worse is that one company push 15 to 20 farmers out destroying the local economy. Machinery is leased through the Case or Class, destroying the dealerships, chemicals are purchased direct. Witnessed a manager getting thrown out of a local dealership because his company didn't think they needed to pay their bills, he wasn't too pleased at the local peasants laughing at him.
I am very afraid that it will eventually happen in Canada, then we will see many a small community destroyed

[hlg]

It`s allready here. big farms=less people=loss of schools=loss of hospitals=loss of eldrly=no people=no servies(stores, garages)=no town...The loss of our elevators and the jobs and taxes was also part of rural decline...

[burnt]

And when the season's over, we all get the same amount of dirt . . .

[ProFarmer]

does farquhar's company own a large tract of the land around esterhazy..

[DogPatch]

We'll likely see more and more small town businesses closing if more farming is done by this type of group. You're right, the inputs will be bought direct, and the profits of the farm will go where ever to the investors that don't know their ass from a hole in ground. Never have to worry about the weather, paying the bills or ......anything. At the end of the day a couple or 3% on their investment is better than the interest in the bank.

They are buying up farm land for more than its worth, and just making it more difficult for a young person to even think about starting to farm. Look what happened to all the investors money put down into the Hog Industry. Apparently some of the barns being foreclosed on are hardly getting the price of the land back..... Something crooked in this whole picture.

[Caveo]

The only thing that you can taken any comfort from is these companies usually never survive because they employ the most useless idiots they can get their hands on!!Farm managers who used to teach farm management who were previously farmers who went bankrupt.

[hedgehog]

if the locals dont want the corporate farmers in the area, they should apply the boycott, invented by the irish 150 yrs ago to get rid of bad landlords/factors.try looking for boycott on google, its an eye opener.
even new zealand, previously a family farmers paradise is falling to the corporates.