Combines big farmers

The economics behind the big farm is simple. Buy the inputs in volume at a discount, sell the products in volume at a premium, and protect your return as best as you can! The one thing it takes to be a big farmer is even bigger balls!! A big farmer has to to spend a lot more time in the office (which is sometimes the pickup) than he can in a tractor seat. The point is with nice equipment the big guys still don't always get to run their own stuff. That is part of the joy. Kind of sad in a way.

thats true, the joy of farming is doing it yourself, and enjoying it. but nowadays it is a business, not a way of life. We are a smaller farm, 2,000+ acres, and my cousin is a bigger farmer who farms 7,000+ acres and he is running all the time and hiring help, never has time to do fun stuff, we go fishing all the time when there is nothign to do, the joys of being a smaller farmer unless you have help that does it for you. But back in the 80's 2,000 acres was considered bigger. i see your from, Nd, maybeIJ i am too, and the bigger farms get, the less people, equals the decline of towns, and here in north dakota we need all the people we can.

We run a 10,000 acre farm_ranch out here in MT where farms that size are not uncommon. My father, my uncle, and I run the farm. Don't have to hire help unless we have a late bumper crop. We go to the mountains, to the fair, and we even golf about 5 or 6 times a year. Yes, we do owe money to the bank for land and machinery. Been that way for 20 years. My grandpa told me that he remebers back when there was a farm on every 640 acres. I wish it could still be that way.

We farm 3000 acres and sell shortline farm equipment and I can say that in the last ten years farms have gotten bigger, but so has our customer base we still have the same customers that we had twenty years ago plus many more new ones. the average size is about 2500-2800 some have 40 acres some have 22,000 they all spend money with me so all are on equal footing with me. I am only 28 and I can tell you I am one of a handful of farmers undwer thirty. the average age of our customers is around 45 to 55.This tells me that the older farmer is the ones who are agressive and have solid banker backing. We sell Kinze planters and one trend that I have noticed in the last ten years is a large number of 16 and 8 row planters it used to be 12 rows that was the big seller but the 16 row has taken over in the last few years. The other thing I have noticed is a trend to larger,faster fall harvest equipment we sell more and more 10 and 13 inch grain augers and large bushel grain carts plus semi grain trailers.But it's the "smaller farmers"that are buying them. To me all you have to have is one more acre than I do to be a big farmer and have one than me to be a smaller farmer. Will

Speaking of fun. My wife and I went to see Jeff Foxworthy on Sunday night....you need to still have fun when you are farming. JWK

Did he have his same acts he uses on his cd's or does he have new materialIJ That guy is incredibly funny.

Sorry to say I haven't heard his CD's....I believe he just takes things of the wall some times. Hope you can see him in person some day. JWK