Oh way better. No argument. And the land had income all those years. No contest at all. Gold does not build wealth. Productive assets do. Land generally is a productive asset.

I'm definitely not saying holding gold is better than holding land. I myself was an active land buyer during all my active farming career. I held a tiny amount of gold and silver after the 90's as we could afford it because after hanging on by the skin of our teeth during the farming crisis meltdown I was not 100% sure I would be a survivor in farming. Quite a few around me did not survive. So I put a sliver of our meager earnings in off farm stuff "just in case". I thought I was a pretty good farmer and turned out I was at least fair and it all turned out ok. But the 10% of our income we put in off farm investments was just in case I was not as good as I thought I was. And I wasn't. But turned out I was "good enough". I survived and ended up doing pretty good. But no guarantee back in the 80's that was going to be the outcome. My off farm investments was a nest egg in case I had to find another occupation. A lot of farmers did. Was probably around 90's or 2000 before got enough ahead to be putting some in off farm savings other than IRA's. We always funded those no matter how bad things were. Never missed a year.

Fast forward 30 years and the farm is doing ok. Quite good actually. Best crew of employees we ever had (started out just wife and I). They all knew what to do. Almost no input needed from my wife and I other than general direction of the business. But we were no longer a low cost producer. Making single digit returns on a lot of money being put out each year to put a crop in. High risk with fairly low reward. We pulled the plug and cashed in. Now, after paying off all the loans and obligations, we have a pile of cash. What did we do with it five years ago? It went into what I consider cash with an inflation hedge, gold and silver. It really did not do very well keeping up with inflation till the last couple years. Looks pretty good now. We are cashing some of it in and buying CD's.

Am I a genius at money management? Absolutely not. But I will take luck when I can get it. I may own some more farm land some day should it get more desirable from a price standpoint, although I need more land at my age like I need a hole in my head. But at 71 I don't need huge income or asset appreciation. I just need to keep what I got as far as purchasing power goes. That is why I have no intention of selling my last third of my gold and silver. Unless dire straights come along, it will be for my kids to piss away. Currently still have over 2/3's of it but have a bunch of open sell orders in should it take off to the upside. If they all should get filled over the next several months would be down to about 1/3 and that would be my permanent holding spot. Would have lots more CD's. I never knew how easy they were to buy in a brokerage account and keep under the FDIC limit with multiple banks. About two minutes.

As a side note, gold is for wealth protection. Silver is more of a wildcard. Has some characteristics or gold monetarily but has lots of commodity blood in it too. It was my speculative bet because I saw the imbalance in production vs consumption back around 2010. So I had a bit of a speculative side to me also. More than just wealth maintaining.

Five years ago upon the wrapping up of our farming operation we essentially were at net worth half farm land and facilities, half gold and silver or in other words what I considered cash. I thought at 65 and retiring having half productive assets (owned paid for land) that covers our basic living needs and half cash (gold and silver ETF's) was not a bad position to be in. I still don't think it is too bad. I'm doing a bit of rebalancing as we speak (a little less gold/silver, more CD's cash). If land were to drop to half or third price like it did in the 80's, I might be inclined to own a little less cash and go more land. We will see, only if it happens (and hope it doesn't - that would be a terrible farm crisis again - no one wants that). At single digit income returns on current farm land prices, and knowing and living through land dropping in price to a third of what we paid for some, land does't look any better than gold to me currently.

I am not saying my reasoning or logic is correct. It is just the way I have looked at it and do look at it. I make LOTS of mistakes. No one should ever do anything because John Burns does it. Not unless they prefer to make a lot of mistakes. I post in case it might cause anyone to question their own reasoning. Cause them to think about things they otherwise might not have. Consider things they may otherwise not have considered. THAT is the benefit of discussion. I have benefitted a lot from AgTalk over the years.