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Comment by 29_29 | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a lot of risk in the system but where to invest? So I'm buying a farm in Iowa. Prices haven't appreciated very much in 10 years, and the Fed can't print farmland

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A relative told me something similar once when I was younger and skeptical about buying a house, because it's a depreciating asset class that didn't make sense to me why it increases in value.

His advice: "Population will continue to grow - but you can't make more land."

According to the NYTimes (although I believe the UN has been saying this for years as I've seen the charts for a long while now), we're do in for a sharp contraction on population growth with an eventual decline.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/world/global-population-s...

This is the coming housing correction. It is likely that we will decide to just depopulate undesirable areas completely. Because if you get under a threshold of density a lot of city infrastructure doesn’t make sense.

I wonder what we can learn from what is happening in Japan?

There was also an article posted here a while back noting that many American cities are too dependent on population growth to fund their infrastructure projects. They are essentially borrowing against expected growth and if that growth doesn't come, some cities could be left with a huge debt.

Probably sourced from strongtowns

This exact problem is why immigration is so heavily supported by liberals around the world. Europe has slowing birth rates, so they need large numbers of immigrants to find growth. The issue is a bit more acute there than in the US, but we will run into this sooner than later.

That's a curious take.

Source?

Conservatives love it too. At least the millionaires and billionaires do.

In this case, the term could mean economic liberalism.

Location, location, location?

America has enough land. What we don’t have is good enough infrastructure to connect these areas to make them viable parts of the commerce network.

Tri-State area in the Northeast is a good example of ‘almost, but no cigar’. Sure, you can live in some parts of Connecticut/NJ/Upstate and commute to NYC, but I feel like it should be a lot better.

Bullet trains would expand what’s possible. Imagine living in Philly and commuting to NY or vice versa in a reasonable amount of time.

Building (no pun) our way out of this mess is one way, but not enough. We need better/faster travel, and unfortunately that initiative should have started 10 years ago. We’re too behind on that front, so I’m not optimistic about the housing market being properly saturated with houses to keep the frenzy at bay. The places where they will have to build are not viable if you need to get to an economic center daily.

Edit:

One thing I think the federal government can incentivize is to subsidize companies to not have a large headquarters anywhere. Find a tax break for companies to create distributed offices across at least 3-5 states. That’s a great way to let people relocate in a safe way (same company, different office), and help build new economic centers.

It's going to be a very, very long time before there's an actual shortage of land in America. Take a flight from New York to San Francisco and look down the entire time. Just an endless expanse of...nothing.

The only thing that changes within the span of a decade or even a single lifetime is desirable vs undesirable land. Purchasing property isn't as much of a "sure thing" as everyone believes. Housing prices are dictated mostly by local policy and speculation rather than physical space.

I'm using farmland to diversify my portfolio, it produces income, I don't think anyone is arguing we will run out of land. Cash and Bonds are risky now, so this is a holding that will not be debased. Its also fun! I feel like I'm living a real life Stardew Valley

You can't make more land but there's actually plenty of land. Some kind of policy disruption could happen to make the land we do have much more accessible. Obviously land barons will fight this tooth and nail as they do and always have – but times are changing faster and faster in many ways.

That's just rent seeking.

that is also what bill gates seems to be doing - bying farmland - he is the biggest private owner of farmland in the united states by now [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-g...

> the Fed can't print farmland

The Fed can't print any kind of land, why such specificity?

In a sense we can print land--that just means building vertically. Building a 10 story building is essentially adding 9 layers of land.

But that land won't have farmable topsoil.

But what about vertical farming? It should continue to get more efficient.

You'd have to make it more efficient by either

(a) adding IP (gengineering crops to grow more efficiently

(b) driving down the cost of inputs (light/water/nutrients)

I'm curious how much more cost efficient vertical farming can really get.

Something's missing, there, as far as properly reproducing conditions, but I haven't figured it out yet.

It needs more than efficiency. It's a great way to produce flavor and nutrient-dense food, but is almost unusable for calorie-dense food. That has to change before it's more than an interesting idea.

You are losing out on free energy from the sun. You'll have to generate it yourself.

Historically, the cheapest way to "grow" farmland has been to make marginal land more productive.

And of methods for doing that, irrigation is the most effective. This speaks directly to Liebig's Law of the Minimum, which states that whatever factor is most critical in limiting plant productivity is the one whose adjustment will have the greatest impact on productivity. For plants, water is a cheap addition, it's frequently the critical missing factor in increasing land productivity, and will literally take you from 0 to 100% alone.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_law_of_the_minimum)

By this reasoning, "vertical farming" is taking land as the limiting factor and literally requires building more land, substrate, water, sunlight, and nutrients in order to increase areal productivity. This is close to a maximally expensive expansion option. To date, vertical farming has been utilised only on very high-value crops, or those for which freshness is at an absolute premium. (Fresh crops can be moved across and between continents in days or hours, though quite often a 14-day transport with refrigeration retains freshness.)

For bulk cereal staples, overall land area remains the principle limiting factor, with sunlight, water, topsoil, fertiliser, and pest control as principle inputs. Weather is another key factor, with freezing, damaging storms (hail, winds), and heat as major concerns.

Meat grown in labs and hydroponics come to mind.

> In a sense we can print land--that just means building vertically. Building a 10 story building is essentially adding 9 layers of land.

That's a bit of a stretch, no?

The cost of the Fed printing money is effectively zero, there are substantial costs associated with building and maintaining such structures.

There are very rapidly diminishing returns to that. As soon as you add just one more floor, you lose a lot of space to stairs. Then you need a stronger foundation, pipes have to push water up farther so those systems need to be reinforced and the walls need to be stronger. Add a third floor and the costs go up a lot more. Once you are into the really big buildings, say skyscrapers, it's not unusual that 40% of the area is taken up by elevators, HVAC systems, supporting infrastructure.

Looking at industry data, e.g. https://ccorpinsights.com/costs-per-square-foot/ we can see that construction costs per livable square foot go from $300 for single story to $600 for midrise to $800 for highrise.

I don't want to be a rancher and farms pay an income. Real estate has gone up ~20% in some markets and may be overvalued. This felt like a good price with inflation considerations.

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