CHEAP (Remote) Farmland - Near Freight Lanes?

are you a truck driver?
Who do you work for?
Where do you want to live?
How many acres do you want?
Do you want pasture, crop, wooded, or swamp land?

 

Good questions, here are some more things to think about:

Do you have any experience farming and lots of money to spend on equipment?
Do you intend to farm it yourself or rent it out? or is this farm just an investment?
If you intend to farm it yourself, do you have the ability to take time off on a moments notice or do you have schedule it? Scheduling time off for a week that ends up raining all week will severely cramp your style. You might need another to do your planting if that happens. Your dispatcher might not be too understanding, if you are a company driver or other form of forced dispatch.

I currently farm, but don't have cdl yet because I can find no way to farm and go otr at the same time. All local trucking companies require 12-18 months truck driving experience that I cannot get without abandoning or renting the farm for a year. This is not fun as getting $4/bushel for corn is not much over what it costs to produce and certainly won't buy a farm and provide an income at the same time.

Good luck

 

Cheap land is where ever it happens to be and that is just about nowhere worth farming. Many farming regions of the country have land that is not the most expensive. I believe that no matter were you go, the price is proportional to the ability of that land to produce and the cheaper the land the worse it is for farming. With commodities at their current prices, if you have to finance a major portion of the purchase price, neither renting it nor self farming the land can pay the monthly mortgage payment, as I see it. The vast majority of large land sales in my area are being sold to investors, not farmers. I find this all over the corn belt of the midwestern US. If a property is under the average, it has poor production value for the tillable acreage in the sale, and if it is really high production land, the price is extremely high. Sales in the last year in Indiana: 358 acres at $11,994/acre. 614 acres at $10,184/acre. SW Wisconsin: 93 acres priced at $279,000 did not sell so it was taken off the market. It had only 35 tillable acres and its buildings were without electric as it was an Amish farm. The 358 acre farm had the highest corn production weighted average I have ever seen for a farm at 186 bushel/acre. Still, that is not the highest price I have heard of. I have heard of farm land at auction in my get no saled at $4800/acre and in 2001 when I bought this farm, this area was the cheapest in NW Indiana. Land has sold recently for $6900/acre within 2 miles of me.

Check out MO, WI, KY, TN, far upstate NY, find out where the Amish are moving to, generally they seek out the cheaper land. Then look for a trucking company that hires in the area.

That's all I can tell you. I hope you find what you are looking for. I love farming, its my favorite ever job, but I need to supplement it, too little profit these days.

 

Does anyone know how expensive land is in the Mojave along I-40, I-10, and I-8?

 

Being that I live in SW Florida and my other location is Northern Michigan and my buddy in logistics told me that neither of those were great locations I was thinking along this same idea.

Farming . NO

Not right now but would be nice to own some land.

How is Indiana ? Seems like middle ground but prefer warm so maybe Georgia.

 

now that oil is down and will be for several years the government will have to back away from subsidizing the corn for ethanol production and you will once again see farms going belly up and land prices in these rural areas able to be bought on the cheap I think

 

No telling just how much of an effect it will have. I have seen that E85 is now more expensive than plain regular gas. Actually I think the current administration will not let the ethanol industry die as it is too important to the success of the environment movement and he routinely rewards them for their support. They will also lobby for support, interesting to see if the R party will support the industry or not.

Farms go belly up because of debt. Debt is the farmer's worst enemy because a farm's sales from production is not stable. There is a lot of debt in farming because land and machinery prices are so high. My cousin heard machinery sales are down 17%, so that industry will be hurt by this down turn too.

On the Closing Market Report from WILL radio, the host said last month that land prices in IL are down a $1000/acre already from where they were the year before.

Patience and caution will be virtues in buying into farming at this time.

 

Used to farm in michigan 30 years ago.Left for Florida with 1/2 the fields still in the ground in December. Too wet to Combine the low lying fields and corn prices were garbage.

 

Understood. There are many parallels to the early 1980s in many economic ways including the current political response the economy paralleling the late 1970s. The late 2010s will look a lot like the 1980s in the farming world. And my cousin just bought a bunch of new stuff. I told him no debt, he did not listen. The long time 5 generation/125+ year family farm is at severe risk. Rule number 1 for all farmers is no debt! Trucking has the same problem with debt. Any down turn and you go quickly broke unless you lived very carefully and conservatively to put a lot away for the inevitable 'rainy' day.