From the article: In August 2025, Graves sent an open letter to media and politicians, pleading for attention to eye-popping numbers. “My letter told what things are like right now. In our geography, it looks like you need to yield 100-300-300 to stay ahead,” Graves describes. “That’s 100-bushel beans, 300-bushel rice and 300-bushel corn. Basic Arkansas averages are 56-bushel beans, 166-bushel rice and 175-bushel corn. In a nutshell, we are going over a cliff. Banks are forecasting farm bankruptcies at 25% to 40%, and the dirty secret is out. Everyone knows it; everyone feels it.”

Couple of things here:

- Where I farm we grow 40-50bu beans most years, rarely hit 180bu corn and, not cited as reference points above, wheat in the 60's, Oats around 130, and Canola in the 40's. All of which is to say $400/ac revenue is a pretty easy target to hit. Our costs, besides land values are essentially the same as farmer in Arkansas and things aren't all that bad for me, so what gives?

- Who honestly thinks that 25% of Arkansas farmers are going to go bankrupt in the next 3 years? (I don't know what report he is citing or the timeline so I just picked a timeline that seems reasonable.) My bet is no one.

I looked up Arkansas land values and good ground seems to go for under $5,000USD an acre, not much different from where I farm - is there some crazy extra cost that American farmers bear that I am unaware of? As a Canadian I hear American farmers whining all the time about how tough things are and I just don't get it. Things are not as good as they were in some recent crop years but overall profitability is not a big issue.

https://www.arfb.com/uploads/pages/arkansas_land_values_2024...

These monopolies, if they were so powerful, would be squeezing farmers so bad that land values would be dropping, not rising... but land values keep going up. Profits are being plowed into fixed assets, which means that there are profits - that's the economics of the thing, right?

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ikiris a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah they lose money on every bushel, but make it up in volume...

Land value has very little to do with how productive it is.

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FollowingTheDao a day ago | parent | prev [-]

You don’t understand America because you don’t live in America. Monopolies drive up land prices to squeeze out people who can’t afford the land.

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JamisonM a day ago | parent [-]

OK, what secret information do you have from living in America that I don't have? I got people driving land prices up here too.. they have driven them up to roughly the same as Arkansas and I can still afford to buy land from time to time. Do explain.

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FollowingTheDao a day ago | parent [-]

It’s not secret , it’s published widely and I read it often. Here’s an example of how much cheaper Canadian farmland is an American farmland.

And your farmland is not only cheaper, but it’s more productive.

You can’t compare the United States and Canada because we have different political systems. I mean, you guys get free healthcare. You can probably afford to buy land because you’re not spending all your money on outrageous insurance premiums, or out-of-pocket cost from going to the doctor.

https://www.producer.com/news/prairie-farmland-still-a-barga... Western Canadian farmland is cheap when compared to Europe and the United States, says the director of an investment fund with offices in Calgary and Toronto.

	▲	9rx a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Here’s an example of how much cheaper Canadian farmland is an American farmland. Western Canada, maybe. Now try Ontario... It makes the I-states look like the land is being given away. Still, not hearing of any looming farm bankruptcies in Ontario.
	▲	ropable a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> And your farmland is not only cheaper, but it’s more productive. It's almost as though comparative advantage is a real thing, and nations can be better off overall through specialisation and open trade. > You can probably afford to buy land because you’re not spending all your money on outrageous insurance premiums, or out-of-pocket cost from going to the doctor. But: isn't he paying for all that in his taxes instead of directly?