Lol, a couple million. A single combine can easily be 1mil. And when you need them, you need more than one.

"Agriculture use" is the zoning class of choice for developers to hold land out of town until the town gets there. They have to show some actual agricultural use, so they lease it to farmers or cut the pine trees, and in return they get the lowest tax value for holding the land.

Then when they want to cash it in, they rezone it to commercial or residential and build on it.

> Theres no reason for me to think it will appreciate any faster than inflation because demand is stagnant.

It has in the past. I looked at a $1M (~$1.5M in today's dollars) farm 20 years ago. Couldn't figure out how to make it work at the time, sadly. Frankly, it seemed like complete insanity when I got into the numbers. But, today it would sell for ~$6-8M. About the same gains as the stock market over the same period, granted, but it's way easier to convince someone to loan you money for land than it is to buy stocks.

There may be no reason to think that will continue to happen into the future, but many are willing to place that bet.

Get a mortgage on the land. Farm pays the interest. The price of the land goes up with inflation, the size of the loan doesn't. Difference is low tax profit.

I enjoy most of it, but, being a tech nerd at heart, I'm in my glory when I'm out in the field playing with the tech. More acres means more time to play. Something I don't feel I get enough of. I get the "I want to keep going" feeling when I disappointingly have to put everything back in the shed. Like I mentioned before, I figure doubling my acres would be the threshold where it goes from "I want to keep going" to "I'm good".

I suppose it's like programming. I enjoy programming. Most people hate it. Many people simply enjoy growing things.

I'm glad there are lots of types of people!

> It’s a no brainer if you have a couple thousand dollars to spare for an estate lawyer to do some estate planning and spare your heirs probate court.

What I keep hearing from experienced estate attorneys is that California probate court is onerous and worth a lot of effort to avoid, but other state's have reasonable probate; it might still be worth it to avoid probate, but it's not such a big deal. OTOH, dealing with assets in a revocable trust can be a PITA while you're still alive and may not give much benefit while you're living either. If you're not in California, it's worth taking stock of the situation before you use California biased advice.

Having an estate in trust may not actually save on taxes either. Yes, you'll avoid probate fees in California, which is significant. But your estate will still pay estate tax. Otherwise, if an irrevocable trust holds the assets, it pays the taxes, and trusts have very abbreviated brackets; your heirs might well pay less income tax holding the property themselves.

When your heirs/beneficiaries die and their heirs become the new beneficiary, that's not subject to estate tax, which is great, but as a result it doesn't get a step up in basis. If the trust is large relative to the estate tax exemption, it's beneficial to not pay estate tax; if not, it's more beneficial to get a step up in basis.

Certainly, in some situations, trusts are more tax efficient, but you have to actually look at your situation to see. Default everyone should have a trust assumptions add a lot of senseless confusion and delay to the people who don't actually get a benefit from it. There are asset protection benefits from trusts as well, and it's reasonable to consider those depending on the situation as well.

Holding a farm in a trust or llc makes a lot of sense to me, because it makes it easier to split ownership without dividing the farm.

There’s an exceedingly strong cultural drive to keep farmland “in the family” even if it impoverishes or otherwise inconveniences the descendants.

I had a coworker once who lives in this region and owns some amount of farmland in a similar situation. He could have sold it and moved his family to <insert modest paradise here, in his case Florida> at any point; even now I think it would be easily done, if not as easy as in the past. But of course he still lives there, immiserating himself to keep the farm barely viable and working a second job to provide a livable salary.

Why? Because selling it would offend his dead father’s pride.

Maybe a nit, but In Illinois it's unlikely that what's being farmed goes into people's mouths generally. Corn (not your sweet corn, but field corn) and soy mostly go into other industries e.g. biofuels, animal feed, chemical industrial inputs etc.

I own both a farm business and non-farm business. I feel the "ick" he talks about.

I don't know how to exactly describe it, but I'd suggest it has to do with more autonomy in non-farming businesses, where you are always trying to balance between trying to make the business work and not taking advantage of people. Or if you end up taking advantage of people...

In farming, it is all laid out for you. Prices are already set in Chicago. The buyer is always there. You grow the product, deliver it, and that's that. These days, with the way technology has gone, you might not even interact with another person in the process.

Many if not most businesses involve lots of ethical decisions where you have to choose between taking advantage of people or making less money.

Depending on one's values though I'd see something similar in some modern conventional farming where the land is being degraded, but there's still the righteousness that you are feeding people so it's justified.

There are ways to farm and some other kinds of businesses too that are win win for everyone involved. They're generally not the most short term profitable. Or even in-one-lifetime profitable.

There’s something righteous in farming where it’s really hard to feel like you’re doing wrong even if you’re getting rich — you are just feeding people. It’s like being a doctor.

I'm from Illinois at the edge of farmland, which rotates corn and soy.

I therefore wondered if it refers to this, a disease of corn...or if it was just a coincidental use of the word.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep43818.pdf?error=cookies_...

I think it's the way the original poster looks down people running other businesses.

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Okay, but as mentioned, 5 million also buys 20 year treasuries that yield 4.90%, or about 245k a year. I probably wouldn't buy them on margin tho.

> that's steady income forever after

Let me tell you about farming... this isn't true.

Land can’t be financed, businesses can be financed. Businesses that own land are much more easily financed, with the lowest interest rates.

When you buy land to develop, you have to pony up cash for it. I have never heard of a lender lending without a cash flow producing asset as collateral.

So it is... Chalk that up to my science reading skills -- I skimmed the text and skipped quickly to the charts, figures, and legends...

If you don't mind me asking, how do you make it work for yourself? Are you single, so you don't need more? Or perhaps you're closer to a 'hobbyist' farmer? (although 500 acres is also well beyond a hobby haha)

On a recent Odd Lots episode, they interviewed a Canadian lentil farmer. His claim was that a family of 3 (Father, Mother, Daughter) could farm 1200 acres of lentils with time left over due to modern automation.

So I guess it would depend on the automation level of the kind of crops you’re planting.

Interesting! It shocks me that you can run a farm on less than a square mile, I can practically plant that by hand, lol

All commodities extraction/producing businesses are like that

And there are more outside of the commodities space

Well, thanks for pointing out what may be a common perspective amongst farmers, I think I prefer other businesses without the ick of running a farm

Agricultural land you can cultivate certainly does, particularly irrigated land.

Land in the desert with zero economic value (think Slab City) probably does not keep up with inflation.

I think this is strictly not a true statement?

Land value can decrease in real terms at the same time inflation is happening, sure. But it isn’t revalued by inflation in the way that a contract denominated in the inflationary currency is.

Can you explain more about what you mean?