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> I'm not surprised that this doesn't work out well

As a small commodity farmer, I don't see why it can't work well. Cash crop farming is quite well suited to small operations as far as I am concerned. The actual hard place to be is the mid-sized farmer trying to manage boatloads of debt.

The current crop price situation is not ideal, but we are also just coming off some insanely profitable years. Save during the good times to weather the bad is farming 101. I suspect, given how much equipment prices jumped in the last few years, that some of these guys thought they could get away with going out and buying a bunch of new toys and that's what really has gotten them into trouble.

My dad told me about _his_ dad painfully learning the same lesson in the 1930s. So it goes.

Farmers that learned the lesson didn't have their kids go into farming.

You seriously think these 400+ farmers that attended this meeting got into trouble because they bought “new toys“?

There’s a monopoly in farming like there’s a monopoly in tech. And you think you can go into tech with some niche business and somehow become Google before Google buys you up? Well, that’s the goal, to just have a company to have a bigger person buy you up and then you go away with the money and everyone else suffers.

There’s an insane separation of wealth and you don’t see that as a/the problem? I’m serious with these questions.

> You seriously think these 400+ farmers that attended this meeting got into trouble because they bought “new toys“?

I'm just not sure how else you go from some of the most profitable years in agriculture history to bankruptcy in the span of a year or two. Vendor prices have not yet come back down in line with reality, nobody is going to question that, but, as they say, the cure for high prices is high prices. These temporary aberrations are par for the course. For what reason is there to believe that this time is different?

> There’s a monopoly in farming like there’s a monopoly in tech.

Yes, Nvidia looks quite similar in a lot of ways. But the pick and shovel makers have always been best positioned to take advantage of gold rushes. That isn't unusual.

> And you think you can go into tech with some niche business and somehow become Google before Google buys you up?

I'm not really sure how this applies in any way, but especially because you don't really have to compete for customers in commodities. A commodity implies that you have automatic customers. It is not like you have to try and convince users to use your product over Google's.

> There’s an insane separation of wealth and you don’t see that as a/the problem? I’m serious with these questions.

I don't doubt it, but the main person quoted in the article is sitting on like $20 million to $30 million of cultivated land and $??? of additional land (Could be hundreds of thousands, could be another 8 figures).

To the extent there is a separation of wealth problem, it's not at all clear where that person is in the separation. Maybe they debt financed the whole thing plus equipment under ZIRP with a non-fixed interest loan, and are now staring down the barrel of $1M-$2M annual interest payments, with very little capital of their own. Maybe they have a total net worth of $10M+ even if they had to sell, and are actually fine if they just quit the game right now. I dunno.

Yeah, there's this whole YouTube genre of fairly unassuming farms showing off millions of dollars in the latest and greatest John Deere equipment and coming up with rationalizations about how it's going to pay for itself very soon.

But the bottom line is that there are fat years and lean years in agriculture, but if it gets really bad for a sufficient number of farmers, the government bails you out because the alternative - no food - is recognized as worse.

Lots of farmers in my area owning equipment with fresh paint (well, plastic panels these days) that can't make land payments, or at least complaining about it. The ROI on new equipment is poor and when things were booming the farmers lost discipline and the manufacturers were happy to add features and cost - fun for everyone! Chickens are coming home to roost now for a lot of folks and some of them are sharpening their pencils and some of them are in denial - in my opinion.

I recognize that harvest windows are restricted, but a coop of local farmers having shared ownership in the bigger toys seems like it might make some economic sense.

And a quick web search shows that some are doing it: https://www.roguefarmcorps.org/equipment-sharing

Thanks for weighing in here.

> we are also just coming off some insanely profitable years

Could you offer some color on the prominent narrative from farmers (even in this article) that the last few years have just been terrible for farmers? From TFA:

> This is the worst agriculture economy of my lifetime over at least the past three years

Thanks again for commenting.

> Could you offer some color on the prominent narrative from farmers (even in this article) that the last few years have just been terrible for farmers?

I honestly have no idea. Three years ago in particular is when the perfect storm lead to historically high commodity prices. If that's what they consider the worst time in agriculture history, I have no understanding of where they are coming from. The problem right now is that the input costs are still trying to act as if it is still three years ago, which is a problem, but the cure for high prices is high prices. I see no reason to think that will last.

As suggested before, it is likely that they are overleveraged and the loss of profitability coupled with higher interest rates is what is killing them. That's the trouble with trying to be a mid-sized player.

The comments/narrative in TFA don't line up with FRED. 2022 was like 3x more profitable overall compared to 2016, and 2023 wasn't much worse. It's definitely coming back down.

From TFA though, 2400 is like 2x-2.5x median farm size. That's not a small farm size. It's not a massive corpo farm, but it's not a small farm. So the segment quoted in that article might be under some pretty specific pressures (other commenters alluded to - they may have bought some very pricey equipment during good years - an actually small farm will get by on shittier equipment or just rent for a brief harvest)

Because no farmer ever will tell you he had a good year. He should have sold a month earlier than he did, or held on a week longer. Just the way it is, I guess.

In my business I see their books. Good years and bad years. Some things are more volatile - dairy can swing between losses and significant profits. Layers are pretty steady if you are on a contract, as long as you don't get the avian flu. Produce farmers rarely have a loss year, but their high income years are generally not as high as crop farmers, who sometimes do show a significant annual loss. More risk = more reward.

The last few years have been pretty good overall, for my clients.

> In my business I see their books. Good years and bad years. Some

Can you share the typical interest rates for these "family farm" (2000 acres?) ?

2000 acres! That’s only worth $30+ million up here in the corn belt.

> In 2024, there were over 100 sales of excellent productivity farmland in Region 6. The sale price per acre ranged from $11,000 to $22,508, with an average value of $17,210 per acre.

[1] https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/farm-focus/2025-04-18-2...

> That’s only worth $30+ million up here in the corn belt.

And more like $60 million (USD; $80 million CAD) in the Canadian corn belt, which is not even nearly as productive. It is astonishing how cheap US farmland is.

This sounds like victim blaming.

Sometimes "victims" have been looking for some consequences for quite a while. Poke a bear long enough to be hurt, don't be surprised people blame you, "the victim".

When other businesses can't hack it, we let them go bankrupt and do something more productive. Why do farmers get treated any differently?

Because it's in the national interest to not let them go bankrupt (because without food you die).

This is scaremongering. Oh noez, we'll all die unless this group gets a bailout from Uncle Sugar.

That sounds like the anti-vax argument that's so used to having the thing they forget the realities.

The difference being that viruses exist, and the scenario in question with food is ridiculous nonsense.

> The difference being that viruses exist, and the scenario in question with food is ridiculous nonsense.

Its not, famines are a real thing and many people die from them. They only way money can prevent famines is by making farmers grow more food last year.

So its just as important to pay farmers with government money to keep growing food as it is to pay hospitals to keep treating people.

Countries don't want to be too reliant on food imports if/when they go to war with their neighbours

Do we? What we saw in 2020 and 2008 suggests otherwise.

An important point that’s missed in this is that these small farms are a vital part of the US’ food security. So regardless of what an analogous business in another sector may choose to do, we really want small farms to be sustainable all over the country.

What is the basis for the idea that small farms are vital for food security? Farms, sure. Small farms? We need low-productivity small farms for food security?

I'm no expert in the field, but if asked, I would prefer thousands of small farms protecting our food security rather than a handful of companies too big to fail.

When you have more diversity, I imagine you would get more resilience, more competition, and market forces work properly.

(pun intended)

Small farms are inefficient though. Farming needs a diverse range of skilled labor but infrequently: the industry as a whole trends towards larger land holders being serviced by specialist labor forces which work seasonally or regionally.

And then within that bucket, it's fairly obvious that larger holders are going to be much more resilient to regional problems if they have diversified land holdings where one area can support a downturn in another.

This is all Renaissance era knowledge.

Inefficient from an economic perspective may not be what we need as a society.

Perhaps we need more farmers living the the county, spending money in small county towns, with more work for people with those special labor skills. Get people out of the city and more people into primary industries.

No straight up inefficient. They produce less. More land is occupied for non productive buildings. Heavy equipment cannot be used at scale. Farms which go bankrupt and fall into disrepair don't produce, and the fields degrade.

They straight up make less food.

According to food bank Australia, we make 3 times the amount of food we need, and 70% of the food that is wasted is perfectly edible.

Update: I also recognize that nobody wants to pay three times the price for all their groceries. I'm not advocating anything, just shooting the shit.

The only way what you wrote could make sense would be if it's referring to crops grown for animal feed, and comparing that to if the crops were directly consumed by people.

So, the claim is thinly veiled propaganda for vegetarianism.

I don't get the small businesses fetishism. Large companies are efficient, resilient, more likely to follow the letter of the law, and more scalably prosecutable if they don't.

The US is currently experiencing a fairly extreme security threat across multiple industries due dependency on a single provider. Boeing and Intel jump to mind, for example.

If that's your answer then you're vastly underestimating how much farmland there is. We have 1.6 million small farms, averaging a couple hundred acres. Large farms usually have a couple thousand acres.

If every farm in the US was around 3000 acres, we would still have a quarter million farms. Even 100k acre mega farms would leave us with 8000+ farms.

"“Seed, chemicals or fertilizer, it’s all in the hands of a few companies that are the only game in town."... "“They all tell me they’re aware of a monopoly problem, and they don’t deny it exists. But they do nothing."

sorry, when I said "thousands of small farms" I meant thousands of small companies producing Seed, Chemicals and Fertilizer.. as well as actually growing plants and animals.

So if that's the actual problem, what's the motivation for preserving small farms? Those small farms are still being supplied by those large suppliers.

If they are so important to US food security, why do they care what happens in China?

This is sort of a tricky way of pointing out that they largely do not grow food for the US.

> these small farms are a vital part of the US’ food security

Hmm, that's only true if the kinds of crops those small farms are regularly growing are the kinds we'd want to have already in the ground as an unexpected "food security" crisis occurs. In other words, durable staples with long shelf-lives, as opposed to cash-crops for export, quick-spoiling luxuries, etc.

Are there any stats that might confirm/disprove that? Because if most those small farms are geared to pistachios or asparagus or hemp, then they aren't really serving as a national safety net.

Commodity production can be massively profitable. Low cost commodity producers make boatloads of cash. Saudi Aramco is exhibit A.

The price of a commodity is the cost of the marginal producer. For oil, a marginal producer is Canadian oilsands oil. It costs them $50 - $70 a barrel to produce their oil, and another $10 to ship to market. Thus the price of a barrel of oil is typically $60 - $80. If it drops below that the Canadian oilsands producers shut down, and the next most expensive producer becomes the marginal producer. (example highly over simplified)

OTOH it costs Saudi Aramco $10 per barrel to produce their oil. They make insane profits.

American farmers are not quite Saudi Aramco levels of profitable, but they are not the marginal cost producers. Large, highly mechanized farms means American farmers have extremely low labor costs compared to the rest of the world.

The last 20 or so years have been extremely profitable for American farmers.

American farmers aren’t some universal entity here. Of course it’s farm subsidies and tariffs that most heavily influence the economy reality for most American farm land, but the average small farm in the US isn’t particularly profitable. In many cases it’s closer to a hobby project than the sole income for a family.

It’s not even just a question of economies of scale, many east coast farmers grow corn just fine without any irrigation systems that’s a lot of capital you can spend on something else. Being able to lease out a tiny fraction of your land for a co-located wind farm alongside agriculture is a huge boon for many. And so it goes across a huge range of different situations.

All this variability is why you don’t see 20+% of US farmland under one giant corporation the way you see in many other industries which benefit more from economies of scale.

The average "small" farm in the US is very large and very mechanized compared to an average farm in Europe, Asia or Africa. But when I say the advantage derives from being large and mechanized, it does imply that American farms that are less large and less mechanized do not do nearly so well.

When talking about all those “family farms” in Europe with less than 10 acres that’s not the majority of farmland or necessarily a major revenue sources for those families. I known a few people in America who call a several acres of plants their garden, so in many cases there are direct parallels they just don’t call them farm or get agricultural subsidies.

> > OTOH it costs Saudi Aramco $10 per barrel to produce their oil. They make insane profits.

What is the source for this 10 bucks figure?

Yeah but at least they're also destroying the soil to grow all that shit Monsanto roundup-ready corn/soy/alfalfa/etc. for no profit and as an added bonus they get to kill all those pesky insects and bees!

Generally round up and similar things require less overall pesticide compared to normal crops

That's a fact that sounds like a good thing, but could just as well be a bad thing. Why does it take less of it, and does that impact the environment downstream less?

It requires less because it’s a broad spectrum herbicide but the crops tolerate it. You don’t need much so not very much runs off. Needing to do multiple applications of multiple types of herbicide is definitely going to cause more runoff and more downstream effects.

I'm not a big fan of Roundup (I say send kids through the field cutting weeds with a bean hook like I did growing up; it builds character), but they have a legit argument that spraying post-emergence causes less runoff than tilling weeds under before planting, so you retain more soil and have less chemicals running into waterways.

No-till agriculture that uses herbicides to keep the weeds under control is better for the soil.

> to grow all that shit Monsanto roundup-ready corn/soy/alfalfa/etc.

Corn and soybean seed generally has a viable period of around 2-3 years. Monsanto hasn't been in business for seven years now. Who, exactly, do you think stored their seed for so long and is now planting all that 7+ year old seed which, at this point, has a low chance of germination?

Do not underestimate the power of Monsanto Derangement Syndrome. To its faithful, anything is possible.

Don't play the fool, Monsanto's ghoulish soul is operating at peak influence under a different name

Better burn some witches just to be safe, right?

Software always has much more extreme economies of scale than any physical commodity, and often has network effects on top of that. So it seems like a bad comparison. Do you happen to have any statistics comparing levels of market concentration across different kinds of physical goods?

Sure, it would be equally difficult to start a new company making non-niche[1] t-shirts or toilet paper or plastic cups or light bulbs today.

1 - "non-niche" a/k/a the undifferentiated "standard-quality" product in the middle of the niche. This is not about someone inventing a longer-lasting light bulb or stain-resistant t-shirt. The best analogue to farmers selling commodity soybeans is something closer to plastic food wrap or aluminum foil. Not a lot of small operators playing in or entering those spaces either.

> Software startups rarely go up against Windows, Excel, Google search, or Amazon e-commerce.

Literally every new startup is a more specific version of Excel, but also direct competitors have also been funded over the last 10 years! Same for Amazon!

Interestingly, California agriculture works differently. Farmers grow many different crops. Fruits and vegetables are not subsidized the way the big field crops are. Vegetable farmers tend to grow more than one crop and often switch based on demand. (Amusingly, some who switched from tomatoes to pot are switching back.) The industry is much more demand driven.

The subsidy-driven end of farming views markets for their product as an entitlement. For dairy operators, that's almost a religious belief. World School Milk Day is September 24th. They're desperately fighting against oat milk and almond milk in schools.

Then came Trump's tariffs. One of the current messes involves canola oil. Canada exported canola oil to the US, until Trump put on a tariff. So canola oil exporters want to export to China. China, in turn, wants a cut in Canada's 100% tariff on electric cars, which looks like it will happen. This in turn will reduce US car exports to Canada.

The current administration is soft on white-collar crime. That's part of the Project 2025 plan, and it's being carried out by refocusing the US Department of Justice on "violent crime". (Which is mostly the business of local cops, since the federal government only has jurisdiction over crimes related to interstate commerce.)