Thinking of owning a farm? Farming is great for some people but it’s not for all. A farm has many assets and liabilities when it comes to finances. One of the assets of owning a farm is seeing the plants grow and making a profit off of those plants. The liabilities of a farm are the expense of seed, cost of employees, and the cost incurred for plant care. A farm can be very expensive but it can also be very profitable.
A liability of owning a crop farm is the expense of seed. Seed prices can vary depending on the crop that meets the farmer’s needs. Corn has many different types of plant species, from comestible corn to the non-comestible corn. Field corn is a non-comestible corn that is ground in to corn silage. Corn silage is used by farmers to feed their livestock but it can’t be the sole feed. Their livestock corn silage. Farmers need to supplement with feed that has a higher nutritional value it takes 30 pounds of corn seed to cover an acre of a field. Non-comestible corn seed is about $485.00 for a 56 pound bag. (Seedland)
Corn seed is also a liability when it comes to the world of agriculture. For example, there may be a farm that grows only corn, and let’s say that farm has 239 acres of field. It is cheaper to buy silage corn seed than it is to buy alfalfa seed. However, it costs more to plant, harvest, and water the corn, and a farmer only gets one cutting out of the crop. Then there are the possible extra expenses of having corn on a farm: a ground freeze after planting, heavy rain hitting the yearling sprouts, wind blowing sand on the corn acting as sand paper, and animals tearing up the plant. It costs $25,812 to buy enough seed to cover 239 acres of field. 239 acres of field will produce 3900 tons of silage. If a farm...
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...ways a farmer may do it; by making juices, and selling the item in small or big quantities. With those two ways and many more who knows what a farmer can do. (Willis orchard co.)
A farm can be very expensive but it can also be very profitable. Farming is like a gamblers game, you can win or you can lose and become bankrupt. Most farmers do come out on top and can be very successful. But sometimes it’s not for all. Ready to take that gamble?
Works Cited
Gregory M. Perry and Clair J. Nixon. How Much Do Farmers Pay in Taxes?. : Ageconsearch, 2002
James R. Nelson. The Leading Edge of the Agricultural Economy. Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho, 2001
Novinger, Bill. Personal interview. 1/13/14.
Seedland. . 3/11/14
Willis orchard co.. 2014. 3/1/14 .
Corn subsides began around the time of the Great Depression, which was intended to save the American farmer. Now the subsidies are destroying the very thing they set out to protect. Corn subsidies have grown into an over-burdensome crutch that enables affluent growers and financial institutions to thrive at the expense of taxpayers and local farmers. The subsidies allow farmers to overproduce corn in an effort to artificially maintain low prices.
Currently, the United States is the largest producer of corn in the world. In 2010, it produced 32% of the world’s corn crop. Corn is grown on approximately 400,000 U.S. farms, showing the importance of corn in the United States’ diets. Twenty percent of the corn produced is exported and corn grown for grain accounts for almost one quarter of the harvested crop acres in this country (National Corn Grower's Associatio...
In 1919, farmers from thirty states, including Missouri, saw a need. They gathered in Chicago and formed the American Farm Bureau Federation. In 1919, they had one goal, they wanted to speak for themselves with the help of their own national organization. Since 1919, Farm Bureau has operated by a philosophy that states: “analyze the problem of farmers and develop a plan of action for these problems” (Missouri). In the past 94 years, the A...
Given the amount of resources that the world as a whole has access to why use corn as a source of fuel? Some would say that countries, such as the United States have an overabundance of food produce. Logically, those countries that have an over surplus of food MUST have enough to put a dent into the rapidly increasing costs of oil and gasoline. Unfortunately, that is a misconception. In order to produce enough corn to fuel the global economy it is important to analyze what that actually means for farmers and the government, not to mention the actual food supply. In order to produce corn ethanol, we must first grow an abundance of corn. Simple right? Wrong, corn is very draining on the soil it is grown, which, in short, means that whomever is growing the corn would have to rotate the corn plantation with something that will restore the nutrients of the soil. Unfortunately, that takes both time and money to do. The task would cal...
At this time, the machinery was extremely expensive for the farmers to buy. Large-scale farmers were wealthy and considered to be businessmen. These farmers, however, were tied to banking, railroading, and manufacturing. They had to buy expensive machinery in order to plant and harvest their crops. As the rural population began to drop, the farmers who remained were successful in their production (made one of America's "breadbaskets").
(Big farms are highly suggested over smaller farms due to the amount of animals you can grow on them.) As told by Implications of Pig Factory Farming, “However, beginning with factory farming chickens in
Selling corn in massive quantity can lead to a greater profit. An ear of corn may averages about eight-hundred kernels in sixteen rows and a pound of corn consists of approximately 1,300 kernels. One-hundred bushels of corn makes approximately 7,280,000 kernels. Every year, a single U.S. Farmer may provides food and fiber for 129 people in the U.S. and 32 overseas. In the U.S., corn production is 2 times that of any other crop. Over 55% of Iowa’s corn goes to foreign markets and the rest is used in other parts of the United States of America.
The farm uses a cycle of animals, which include cows, chickens, turkeys, bunnies, and pigs, in order to keep the land fertile which allows for little use of external human made input. Polyface farm also takes hours of work everyday to upkeep unlike factory farms where it’s mostly automated. The farm also makes use of forested areas and other non-farmed resources, which forces them to protect that land from being cut down to receive those benefits. However, organic farming’s limiting factor is human population growth and the resources needed by the growing population.
...o. “The Great Agricultural Transition: Crisis, Change, and Social Consequence of the Twentieth Century US Farming”. Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 103-124.
Corn took over American farmlands at the end of World War II, when a new synthetic fertilizer was introduced and manufactured by former munitions factories. It allowed for the elimination of crop rotation, leading to the switch from family farms to the corn monoculture. Economically, this system seems to make more sense, but it destroyed the once sustainable, sun-driven fertility cycle. Now, farmers are trapped into making more and more corn by government policy. As the abundance of the crop causes prices to fall, farmers must plant even more in order to make ends meet, surviving off constantly decreasing government subsidies. What’s worse is that the New Deal system that allowed corn farmers to stay afloat has since been dismantled in an effort to lower food prices and increase production without considering the farmers
The idea of the family farm has been destroyed by large food corporations. As discussed in class, industrial farming typically leads to the mass produ...
To really begin to understand this complex topic a person really needs to understand the basics of agricultural subsidizing. A subsidy is defined as a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public (Mish, 2003). More specifically, in the agricultural industry the government provides financial assistance to producers in the farm industry in order to prevent decline in production. The government does this by providing financial assistance to farmers and by managing the cost and supply of certain commodities. There a few reasons for this. One reason is to provide assistance to family sized farm owners who have trouble competing with commercial farms. This is supposed to maintain an efficient market balance. Another reason is to control the prices of commodities and keep the global food prices low. There are two main ways that payments are made. The payments may be made directly based on historical cropping patterns on a fixed number of acres. Or they can also be made depending on current market prices. Farmer’s may be guaranteed...
A surprising fact is that most of the corn we produce in the United States is not actually eaten. In 2008 the United States produced a total of 12.1 million bushels of maize. Of that 5.2 million was used as livestock feed, 3.6 million for ethanol production, 1.8 million for exporting, .9 million for production of starch, sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, and oils, and finally .3 million for human consumption in grits, flour, alcohol, etc.
Farmers are essentially the back-bone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production, (CSS statistics). Without farmers, there would be no food for us to consume. Big business picked up on this right away and began to control the farmers profits and products. When farmers buy their land, they take out a loan in order to pay for their land and farm house and for the livestock, crops, and machinery that are involved in the farming process. Today, the loans are paid off through contracts with big business corporations. Since big business has such a hold over the farmers, they take advantage of this and capitalize on their crops, commodities, and profits. Farmers are life-long slaves to these b...
Logsdon, Gene. “What if Farming for Profit Really isn't Possible.” The Land Institute. Prairie Writers, 2013. Web. 30 Oct. 2013.