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North Central US | Boone & Crockett - 8/26/2025 12:44
GS2 - 8/26/2025 10:47
No, we have too many who refuse to change. Refuse to diversify.
Not that long ago, the story was the same but your grandfather sent the corn through cows and pigs and made a nice profit.
Now when you bring up diversifying into livestock everyone has an excuse, but they will gladly keep complaining about low grain prices while livestock is profitable.
Diversify so while one is down the other is up. Put cropland into pasture, chop the corn for silage, and feed a mostly lovable creature that will occasionally escape and look at through your house window. well son, my grandpas era was the 50’s 60’s and 70’s, and there wasn’t squat for “nice profits” in livestock. Few nickels and dimes, here and there, that was about it. The most I ever got for my fair show cattle was .36, and that was a premium price, early, mid seventies.I bought 45 really nice gilts, bred them to a good boar, sold them for a $2,000 loss. Sophomore in high school. Circa 1976 Nice profits my ass.
Read my last paragraph again:
Diversify so one is up and the other is down. Also it isn't 1976 anymore either, the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s have come and gone, all have given a period where livestock were lucrative and grain was worthless and vice versa.
My grandfather's time was the same as yours and he put 6 kids through college on a little more than a section of land during the 1980s. Cows, chickens, pigs, wheat, barley, sunflowers, flax, and corn and beans that went mostly for feed, and alfalfa on top of it, while paying 15% on new IH tractors and getting two children going on their operations as well. A very busy "little" operation, an operation we still have the majority of the equipment from, which came from the late 60s and early 70s, along with the "wrong time" IH tractors as well.
Then again, he came out of the depression, breaking teams for his father. Perhaps they called it the greatest generation for a reason, they made good times which made...
Up and down Market talk you'll find people complaining about how many dollars per acre they are losing this year and previous years.
I never said you'd be rich, you're delusional if you think you can get rich in one generation farming, and we weren't and still aren't rich now,with a diversified operation you stay constant. Never really rich, never really poor, never gain a whole lot at once, never lose a whole lot at once.
Edited by GS2 8/27/2025 07:22
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Does anybody else agree?
