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Comment by DC1350 | Hacker News Reader

Couldn’t you feed a family high quality food for a few decades with $500k? This seems like a lot of effort if you aren’t planning on making a profit.

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That’s fair, but two posits

(1) you can’t really get high quality food outside a lot of sourcing and effort. As an example, I grow purple green beans that taste better than any green bean I’ve every bought. You may be able to get that particular green bean from a specialty shop, but I’m doing this with 30 different plants on 1-2 acres. I can harvest and eat the plants the same day as well (which has far more nutrition).

(2) I shouldn’t have said no profit, I do have a plan to make it profitable. But that’s not the primary goal, nor would it be my primary job. I’m a software engineer by trade and can work remote easily. Further, I can later sell the farm and equipment. It’s likely I’ll make a profit there as well.

I'm in a fairly similar situation, albeit on a smaller scale (6 acres) and I do this for reasons you already mentioned (nutrition, inflation hedge) plus climate change. I have years of experience growing veggies in my backyard and I agree, it takes a lot of money to get the same quality food elsewhere, and some specialties are out of reach. It's also a lot of fun.

I'm also planning for retirement in the 2030s and I'm trying to funnel my software engineering money into a small productive farm/market garden that produces enough to make a small profit and hire some help when needed. I haven't found a good way to offset my initial investment costs as a beginning farmer against my regular income from my main job, but I just started to learn more about Schedule F Profit/Loss from farming. Any pointers on what to read or CPA recommendations are highly appreciated.

Greetings from Hardiness Zone 6, which I assume will turn into Zone 7 within my lifetime.

Frankly, while I've bailed hay, grown my own food, etc. I'm also unfamiliar with this scale - just decided to go for it.

I already have someone willing to harvest for me and split the profits 50/50. I'm offering them a 30(me)/70(them) split on the condition they teach me to run their equipment, explain what they know, etc. There's not really a guide on starting a farm, you need to find someone who knows and work with them.

I also have family members in the cattle industry, construction and one family member specializing in maintaining prairie land. Speaking with them I am working to figure out the best way to maintain and improve the farm. For instance, I have a cabin on the property from the civil war period; we're going to repair it and put a new roof on etc.

> you can’t really get high quality food outside a lot of sourcing and effort

To be fair, this is very dependent upon the region you live in. I live in a suburban area bordering on farmland, and so I can get piles of really good quality foods at my local farmer's market every weekend. There's farms naturally raising grass fed beef, as well. And a couple people that go out to the Pacific and catch fish and then sell it at the same farmer's market.

I imagine that's a bit of a luxury in some places, for sure, but I'd bet it's not that uncommon, either.

That $500K doesn't disappear. In a few decades the farm can be sold and you can get your money back (depending on changes in land prices).

But farms across the nation are failing and conglomerating. It just seems like he's investing in horses after the Model T has been released.

These conglomerating farms are exactly the reason for the lower quality food the poster is talking about. If the trend you identify continues then the relative scarcity of high quality food will rise.

That's assuming it's their money to begin with (I'd assume it's a loan). With those numbers it takes about a decade to make it back — perhaps more with capital costs. That doesn't sound bad at all? What were you expecting?

I don’t know. It just seems inefficient to me. Farming is not enjoyable work for most people who do it so the whole plan just reminds me of Marie Antoinette’s peasant role play hobby.

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