Farming small acreages

[iowascott78]

I have been thinking about buying a place of my own to hunt and have been saving up for a down payment. Here is a dumb question lets say you have around 20 acres of farmable ground would it be practical to farm it and make money if grain prices remain high? I know I wouldn’t get rich and it wouldn’t be easy but if you could make more than leasing it out it would help with the payments. I have seen a lot of farmall M's on craigslist and smaller used implements at what I could consider low cost. It's just something I have been considering if it would be cost effective. I appreciate all of your responses<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
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[spltbrow]

i think one of the biggest draw backs is the equipment you have to by that would make up your overhead cost. I have thought about the same thing with my farm 30 acres.

I can go by bigger equipment to do the 30 acres (cause all i do now is 6 acres in foodplots) and have to put the time and work in to plant it and pay for all the seed and fertilizer cost and only make i am geussing double what i make just sitting back and collecting the rent chk. (maybe a little more than double?)
allso unless i went and bought a picker i would have to pay someone else to pick it, which would cut into my proffit.

imo i will just sit back and collect $215 per acre rent.

 

[Sligh1]

Custom farming is an option. At a minimum, if you do things yourself you'll FOR SURE have to do custom combining.
If you did it yourself, I'd say buying OLD cheaper stuff that would get job done would be examples like this (some folks will say some of these ballparks are crazy BUT I've bought a lot of stuff at these prices).

TRACTOR - $5k-15k
disk - $300
SPRAYER - $500
Cultipacker- $500
Spreader - $300
4 Row planter, NO-TILL - $2,000
You also better be able to deal with stuff breaking, lots of headaches and you'd better be a patient guy. I RARELY ever lose my temper BUT I find myself losing it on equipment that breaks.

If it were me, I'd rent or custom farm for 1st couple years SO you're not overwhelmed with costs, learning & headaches AND you can focus your energy on learning land for DEER and food plots. After you got all under control, take this question up again in a couple years. The order I'd do it.... 1st 2-3 years I'd cash rent it. After that, I may consider either custom farming it OR doing it myself OR doing custom for 3-4 years and then taking it over myself after that. That's what I'd do at least. I own a lot of tillable land and I don't want the headache SO I rent out most of it and I do a smaller amount on my own. I leave about 40 acres for myself to do and that's enough to give me plenty of nice size headaches. I do have smaller equipment and I'm super fussy BUT that's all I have time for with a family, another job, deer stuff, etc.