RLS0812- I don't want this to be a bash session but I don't know your background when it comes farming in the U.S. but I'll tell you I'm not overly worried for a number of reasons. I grew up in a medium-small city but had 4 farms in my extended family--none of them ever got very big [I don't any of them got over a 1,000 acres] but none of them went broke and none of the land has left these familes ownership that I know of. I know other farmers as well and have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles on the back roads of South Dakota over the past 35 years. There is almost no idle land to be seen. Its all being worked. Farmers and landowners are making money, some years better than others. So, I know some things about ag; at least corn, soybeans, and cattle in e. SD, sw MN and nw IA. Maybe not representative of all ag but generally the Midwest normal.
A couple of specific points:
No one enters farming in the typical farm today in this region starting from scratch because as you pointed out its too expensive unless your independently wealthy and/or you had investors which in a lot of states is tricky to do because of "family farm" laws.
Speaking of family farmers, most "corporate farms" are actually incorporated family businesses. That doesn't mean they don't farm thousands of acres, only that these corporations are various arrangements of nuclear and extended families. The ave. size of a Midwest corn & soybean farm is over 1,500 acres; that's 10 1862 Homestead Act farms. Unless you have some niche product of various kinds, if you going to farm in the general commodities realm, there is a lot of cash flow to go through to make money. Its not for the faint of heart. But its not going way anytime soon.
Yes, the EPA can propose just about anything it wants. That doesn't mean it will become law and/or stand up in court. The farming lobby is powerful and with the Senate having equal representation farm states that have small pops can usually work out deals to water down any overly burdensome regulations. Overly "burdensome" regs can be in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I think not having your animals sh** pile up and run off into the neighboring stream (I certainly couldn't and shouldn't run my sewer line directly from my house to a stream) isn't overly burdensome if a guy has a good loader and can push it into a well designed holding area for later spreading on the fields. But to some farmers, making them push sh** may be burdensome.
The hypoxia "dead zone" (which moves around) in the GoM has been linked to Midwestern ag for years and the EPA has been powerless to have N & P compounds brought under control than just some general tinkering. With precision ag, the actual amount of fertilizer has flat lined over the past few decades which will eventually clean up the water if BMP are implemented and usually save the farmers money. As for the se PA guys and the Chesapeake, more grass and/or forest filter strips would be one way to reduce the excess nutrient load in the water--maybe better hunting in that area as the result.
U.S. ag is a mixed bag of pluses and minuses but I don't think you're going to see U.S farmland not being farmed mostly by "family" farms any time in the near future...
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Originally Posted by DakotaRog
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