sad faces

[bgmb]

Depends where you farm(land price) and what your risk tolerance is/stage in farming.

[hobbyfrmr]

I have lived skinny for so long it's just another day. I was just getting used to "doing ok".
I did notice yesterday that Suncor on the NYSE gapped down but Suncor TSE slid down . Either way, it looks like a good time to buy in. I don't see Suncor going Broadacre......ooops I meant bankrupt. Crazy spell check.

[fjlip]

Okay "old guys", 1968 wheat 4 bu/acre quota, $1/ bu, and mostly damp #5 crap, average 25 bu/acre. Bartered wheat for 60 cents a bu delivered. That's $15 gross per acre. Never had canola but maybe a couple bucks, in 1972 bartered canola for a new steel shed at $2/ bu. 40x80 Behlen only cost $5000. Diesel 6 cents a liter, gas 10 cents a liter at pumps. Land at $12000/ quarter.

Fast forward to 1974, wheat $5, same as today, canola $9 same as today. Phos $100/ ton. Land doubled in price to $25000 a quarter. Oh ya a dozen beer $3.50. Things can change in a hurry! Same old same old, nothing new here. Wait it out, spend wisely.

[ado089]

Freewheat, we had some TLE action driving price up here and I was averaging a little bit of Alberta goodness into that figure.

[ado089]

Oh and by the way I'm talking about 2005. How quickly we forget.

[parsley]

Ahhhhh, flip, you're a man of my heart..... ; D #GoodOldDays. Pars

[fjlip]

AgExpert benchmarking is easy...
any one else using it?
These are our ratios...
all fair market values...

Assets to liabilities= 29.6855
Liabilities to assets= 0.0448
Total Equity to total assets= 0.9552
Total Liabilities to Equity= 0.0469
Total revenue to total Assets= 0.1058

[samhill]

Don't forget a 24 at $4.80 and a cent a bottle back.

[freewheat]

Must be a nice, calm, comfortable, and secure era in ones farming career, FJ!

[farmaholic]

freewheat, when the Fjs of the farming world get to that stage, the tolerance for the bullshit gets extremely thin. Wanting to risk capital gets old. No longer blinded by ambition but jaded by a lifetime of some good and mostly questionably bad experiences. Realizing I don't need to do this...

[sumdumguy]

Everything cycles, but farming seems to have deeper, longer valleys or should we call them canyons. By the way yesterday our car thermometer showed 82* in Vegas- too hot! Tomorrow through the Grand Canyon tp Mesa. Mandalay Bay crab buffet nearly killed us. Decadence at its best! Now that cycle I can live with.

[theplowboy]

when land prices are going up, low interest rates and decent grain prices I think you can be a little more aggressive and have a higher amount of debt.

we are pulling in the horns so to speak and trying to pay down some debt right now for a bit of leaner times ahead.

never a bad think to figure out how to lower your cost of production per bushel and per acre, interest payments can be a big expense on highly leveraged expensive land and as interest rates start to move higher.

[sawfly]

a lot would depend on where you started.
how old you are. how busy are you now. how busy do you want to be. succession plans etc.

i have been tackling the the debt thing . pretty hard.
we had some good years to do it.
no L.O.C minimal machinery loans.

i just wonder about the wisdom of it.
as cheap as money is and inflation.
and wearing yourself out fixing junk.

on the other hand as fast as money
flows out just to operate, fuel , fert. chem.seed,accounting,

what would seem like a good cushion 20 yr.s ago. could vanish in a year now.

[SASKFARMER3]

86 in jamaica! Ya Mon! Why invest in farmland in Saskatchewan, really the world has plenty of food.

[MBgrower]

Had to laugh after reading broad acres excuses for not being profitable. Blamed most of it on poor crops and prices. Fu@k, this is farming, prices and yields aren't guaranteed, it s not like making widgets on a factory line where you control production. You have to assume the worst and plan for it.