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- Newsgroups: misc.rural
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!spool.mu.edu!yale.edu!jvnc.net!nuscc!swkmorri
- From: swkmorri@nuscc.nus.sg (Perry Morrison (Dr))
- Subject: Capital Suicide (was Real Farms)
- Message-ID: <1992Sep5.053020.22472@nuscc.nus.sg>
- Organization: National University of Singapore
- References: <1992Sep4.175146.8815@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
- Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 05:30:20 GMT
- Lines: 32
-
- boldtp@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (ACE-CADET) writes:
- :
- : Ok, my calculator says $6,240.000 in capitol with an $80,000 annual payroll.
- :
- : Thats a 1.28 percent ROI over inflation. So, why don't you sell the place
- : and invest? Why struggle along with $20K/year annual income, when your
- : sitting on ($6.24M/4 = ) $1.56 Million?
-
- A very astute comment. I have been to many farm clearance sales and
- watched machinery sold for almost nothing. I've seen 50 or 60 years of
- work and history go down the toilet. Jeez I remember going to one that
- had the world's oldest chain saws for sale (like 6 feet long with a
- truck engine on one end (almost)). The dogs were sold and then the kennels
- right after.
-
- What I'm trying to say is that a lot of BIG farming IMHO is capital
- suicide--you'd be better off investing in real estate, shares or whatever
- and growing your vegetables, chickens etc on a small patch that is
- manageable and FUN (instead of a failing business proposition). The
- other point is that a lot of truly competitive, commercial farming
- demands non-sustainable and down right environmentally reckless
- farming practices. I say this because large acreage and reasonable
- profitability (for a lot of people) mean farming without regard for the
- next 30 years. If you flog your land to death in the short term you will
- out-compete those who don't.
-
- If I had $1 million to spend/invest, I know it wouldn't be in a few
- thousand acres of head-ache. (I have a 7 acre headache and that's
- enough).
-
- cheers
- perry morrison.
-