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Martinsville, Ohio | That varies greatly from farm to farm as I know families that make a good living on a few hundred acres and others that farm thousands of acres to make a living, all with with none to various enterprises of off farm income.
This gets at the crux of entrepreneurship and Return On Investment of figuring out how to make more on less and how to expand a profitable enterprise with profits and borrowed money. Borrowed money is the trick to make your labor more profitable per hour and per acre to pay off the loan with interest.
Corn ran away with profit per acre in my neighborhood this year as the farmers who gambled on planting it the first week of June, the first week we could plant in Ohio past the insurance planting date of June 5. Much of the corn around here made over 200 bushels per acre and some sold part of it for $7.00. I know one young farmer who sold 140 bu per acre at $7.11 and I encouraged him to go for it to build his profits from his first big year in farming. Now he has money to pay the bills and expand even more this year.
That's an exception to the rule this year but it did happen. Other sage old farmers planted soybeans and didn't control their resistant weeds and got 40 bushel soybeans and didn't sell them the day they were $14.22 a bushel, about the time that corn was worth $7.11. This is where knowledge and network ruled King and doing what worked in the past did not work well this year. I sold beans for $12 this week because I didn't sell enough at higher prices earlier so I was somewhere in the middle.
Cost of production varies greatly from ownerships, rents, and price shopping. You read tons of threads on that on here. It's easy to bend over and lose a dollar out of your pocket trying to pick up a hundred dollar bill, kinda like what grandpa taught dad and I.
Some pretty well healed farmers here had high dollar crop insurance and took PP on their corn and planted them to radishes and or peas. They are set to grow a profitable crop next year which starts tomorrow!
You ask a deep, thought provoking question that has taken me a life time to learn much about.
Ed | |
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Profit per acre?
