# Shrinking Farmland.



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

More so than thought....from Growing TN.

Regards, Mike

http://tennessee.growingamerica.com/news/2018/05/u-s-has-lost-farmland-equivalent-to-size-of-iowa-to-development-2018-05-11


----------



## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Not surprised. The geniuses on our county zoning board requires twenty acres to build a house on. Their thought is it saves farmland while we see the opposite. Somebody buys twenty acres, decides the house needs to go in the middle of it, then of course a winding driveway or one that runs at an angle, then of course they need a big yard, and a pole barn and etc etc. By time its all said and done what's left isn't worth messing with, so there went 20 acres for one house.


----------



## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

My Dad called it the 'last crop planted', better known as asphalt or concrete. Yea, I have the same local officials, thinking they are slowing down the losing of farm land, with 10 acre minimums.

Larry


----------



## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

Here in Alberta between Edmonton and Calgary along hwy 2 is some of the best land in the province. Its being developed with expanding cities, highways, industry and of cource acreages. In some case after developing an area they are left with huge piles of rich black dirt top soil. They dont know what to do with it so sometimes they just buried it, use it as fill in low spots. Its a shame they just waste such good top soil.


----------



## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

r82230 said:


> My Dad called it the 'last crop planted', better known as asphalt or concrete. Yea, I have the same local officials, thinking they are slowing down the losing of farm land, with 10 acre minimums.
> 
> Larry


So do you suppose your geniuses came up with the ideal and our idiots copied it or did our geniuses come up with it and your idiots copied it?

At least the county next door kinda has it figured out, 2 acre minimum but with a lot of frontage so at least it saves land behind em. Owners end up with a skinny rectangle.

Some people have outsmarted the idiots around here, big farm gets divided up so two will talk, they'll build on opposite sides of their twenty, then after X number of years take a 10 off the side next to the neighbors and that neighbor will do the same then they sell it as a twenty, so now they just snuck three houses on the original 40 with even less left to farm.


----------



## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Meh, my MIL and I used to have this discussion... Everybody gets excited about "urban sprawl gobbling up farmland" but NOBODY wants to pay enough for anything a farmer produces to keep him profitable, healthy, or even in business... Most farmers are elderly and many don't have children or descendants who want to bother farming. For many in their 70's and 80's, with the high prices of everything today, the land itself has become their "retirement"-- particularly if they don't have children or family interested in farming.

Besides, you can't stop progress... In our area, farmland is $10,000 an acre... $14,000 or so for development or selling it off in 10 acre blocks to "hobby farmers"... "Real" farmers cannot afford to buy land for that and ever hope to pay for it with current prices, regardless of what crop you're growing (well, maybe medical marijuana or something...) Hobby farmers and suburbanites are willing to pay ANY amount to get a few acres, put up a $500,000 new brick home, a $150,000 new steel barn, fence it with wood rail fence, put up a big steel "South Fork Ranch" entryway, and turn 3-4 horses and a half dozen Longhorn cattle loose on it, and sit on the porch whittling a stick pretending their John Wayne or something... we're surrounded by citiots on every side. When I was driving a school bus, we had to go into a lot of stupid cul-de-sac's where some developer bought "Granny Schickelgruber's 40 acres" and threw up a new subdivision of tract houses, with a single street and cul-de-sac down the middle of it, to maximize the number of McMansions they could squeeze onto it...

When you're surrounded by citiots, your taxes go through the roof... "improvements to the neighborhood" the tax appraiser A-holes say... "I don't live in a "neighborhood"-- I live on the same farm our family has worked for the last 120 years". I don't give a rip what the neighbors do... they want to drop a few million on a few acres and a McMansion and some new shiny Deere toys to play farm, good for them--- BUT, *TAX THEM*... they're the ones with "money to burn"... But no, they're "increasing the value" of the land, and the gubmint will do ANYTHING to make a buck, so.... pay up or get out.

Of course, it's "increasing the value-- TO WHOM??" Certainly not to the "real farmers" in an area, who find themselves chasing fewer and fewer scraps of land that are constantly getting smaller and smaller, whittled away at the edges as the "in-laws and outlaws" and heirs sell of their part of Granny Schickelgrubers farm they inherited, leaving the tenant farmer working little dinky patches of ground that's left... Then the citiots are PO'd because of the noise, the dust, the slow wide equipment on the roads... They call the cops when a stray cow or calf jumps the fence or goes heels up in the back 40 as buzzard bait, like it's a friggin' 3 alarm emergency... Stupid sh!t like that which just reinforces the country boy's innate hatred of the great mass of humanity and society in general...

SO, while I had dreams of farming the land my Great-grandfather's uncle had bought and settled in the late 1800's as one of the first settlers in our area, and my great-grandfather bought from him, the land my grandmother was born and died on, Dad farmed, and I farmed in my own time, and hoped to pass down to my kids one day and hopefully their kids someday, I realize that is EXTREMELY unlikely... we can't afford to live there... The land is more valuable to the gubmint for taxes sprouting million dollar McMansions than $3 corn or 60 cent cotton or $1.30 calves... I guess if one wanted to run one of those stupid jingoistic "organic, all-natural" pick-yer-own type petting farms and deal with the greenie-weenies all day in amongst the citiot crowd, one could do that... Not me, but *someone* could I suppose... I hate people too much for that.

Trying to stop progress is like trying to hold back the tide... it just runs in around you. Hold onto the farm, and pretty soon you own a trash dumping site or a swamp from all the water running off the surrounding developments, you have citiots b!tching about everything you do (and don't do) and sticking their [email protected] fool noses into everything you do (and don't do) like it's any of their business *at ALL* or like they have any friggin' clue that know anything about what they're talking about...

Nope, "if you can't beat 'em, JOIN EM..." I'm counting the days when I can sell out and get the h3ll out of the sea of citiots swamping us on every side... maybe trade my third of the 87 acre home place for 80-90 acres of decent farmland far, FAR away from all these [email protected] citiots and their friggin' hobby farms, horses, and assorted BS.... If I can see the neighbor's place from my house, there's TOO MANY PEOPLE!!!

Later! OL J R


----------



## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

When my MIL and I discussed this, she, of all people, bless her solid Republican heart, wanted a "LEGISLATIVE" (ie GUBMINT) solution to the problem. Course she was from Indiana where yall have zoning and land commissions and all that deciding what land is for what use and what can be sold in what amounts for what use and all that garbage which achieves basically NADA...

Down in Texas it's "money talks everything else walks"... I don't like the citiots, but I realize that even IF we had some stupid gubmint authority telling people what they could and couldn't sell their land for or use their land for, IT WOULD HAPPEN ANYWAY... people ALWAYS find away around "the rules" and it happens REGARDLESS of the "good intentions"...

I'd remind her, "The pathway to hell is paved with good intentions!"

I don't want some gubmint numbskull telling me what I can or can't do with my land, or that my land can't be sold for this or that... If I want to sell it for development (because everybody around me already pretty much has already) then that's MY business, nobody else's!

She decried the loss of so much "good farmland"... Yeah, but you CAN'T MAKE A LIVING OFF IT... which is WHY it was sold in the first place!

Besides, I told her, "Ya know, ECONOMIC REALITY determines why things happen the way they do... everything else takes a back seat. If a farmer can make more money selling his land for McMansions than he can farming it, who's to say he shouldn't be "allowed" to sell it?? We're supposed to be a "free country" after all, and it's his PRIVATE PROPERTY...

Besides, when there's enough mouths to feed, and there's not enough food to go around, when cattle are selling on the hoof for $5.00 a pound and soybeans are $45 a bushel and corn is $20 a bushel and cotton is $4.00 a pound, somebody will figure out how to make money off bulldozing all those old McMansions they're throwing up now, and turn it all back into farmland again... **IF** there's enough money in it... "

Later! OL J R


----------



## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Even here where most of the time land is in the 5-7K per acre range, by time you figure in property taxes you can't afford to own it if your "just" farming it.

I can pay $250/acre in rent, in 20 years yes I might have been able to buy it for that price, but that doesn't figure in interest or property taxes on that land. At least rent payments are directly deductible. Quite frankly can't afford even $250/acre in rent anyways.


----------



## Gearclash (Nov 25, 2010)

40 acre minimum to build a house on bare ground here. Irritating but seems to work. It does have the effect of driving up the price of existing acreages.


----------



## Ray 54 (Aug 2, 2014)

Luke I like your take on the situation. I have been saying it seems we have to much farm land. Sure I would love to own 100's or 1000's more acres( I have 300 ),but it is hard to find any that will pay for itself.

Silicon Valley in the pre computer days was called Valley of God among other things as productive of soil as there is ALL PAVED OR BUILT ON. Maybe several of the eco friendly vegetable patches but no real farms. But like Luke always thought if it was needed cities can be bulldozed as well as forests.

I am on borrowed time unless want to go in the wine business,and it is not a bed of roses. Wine makers are like the most picky horse people. And 98% of them cannot grow a grape unless they have money to burn in the process. Just another citydot for the most part most with egos larger than a bureaucrat. If I could just decide snow and cold where good would be easy to leave The Land Of Fruits and Nuts.


----------



## NewBerlinBaler (May 30, 2011)

I've long held the opinion that profitable farms keep farmland prices high which keeps developers from buying out farmers with the end result of less sprawl. How many farmers were selling out when corn was over $8 per bushel?

The article tells of major farmland loss between 1992 & 2012 but 2006 thru 2013 were some boom years for farming. So now I'm wondering if my theory is flawed. I'd like to see a year-by-year study that looks at farmland lost to development versus how the overall agricultural economy was doing each year.

If, in fact, less farmland is lost when commodity prices are high, then we need policies that keep prices high - like the Renewable Fuels Standard. People complain about ethanol but if it ultimately helps reduce sprawl than maybe it's a good policy.


----------



## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Location,Location,Location

Here I think the minimum you can sell is 6 acres of farm ground.Very little developement in the country here.Here it's more likely that a new house is built on a lake.

Talked with a guy on the outskirts of the twin cities that had farm ground that has been zoned industrial.He sold some off for $2 a sq ft.It bordered a rail line which added value to it.


----------

