You may want to consider your reason for growth - are you sure you enjoy farming and realize it is not a high profit business - hard to get rich farming (unless you had lots of hard working grandparents passing it down to you). Jalopy's scheme will certainly get you the land and it's worked in my area (not quite $260_acre - but it might as well be some years). I'm not sure how long folks doing business that way can last (the guy in my area supposedly has off shore $ and ties to space aliens if you believe the rumors, but he's still going after 3 years). Most of farming at more traditional levels (50_50 or sub $150 cash rent) wonder if the high roller is doing something special, but it doesn't appear to be so. Anyway, doing as good as of a job or better than the better operators in your area will help - or at least doing a sub par job will definitely hurt. However, this only affects landowners with some ties to the land (ie. they care about mowing, straight rows and no weeds),many new landowners are really only interested in the green of money (doing a nice job is still required though). If you can find a way to cut your costs_acre significantly (btw volume is not enough) by finding cheaper inputs like fertilizer - manure (application still costs $),industrial byproducts, etc you gain an edge when land comes up for rent (cash or 50_50). Running profit margins down to $10_acre in an average year is too risky in a business where you can't predict your gross income within $50_acre. Part of the problem is also we don't focus enough on making each of our current acres profitable and hope to use size to gain profitability. I'm half your size, but with 2 hog finishers and we manage to feed a family of 6 (kids are young though). It's taken G-d's help, some creative financing and lots of work to keep equipment and input costs down (though cheap_junk equipment and cheap seed don't work very well either). I guess I'm saying that at 1300 acres you could spend more time improving cost efficiency in your operation and wait for opportunities to arise (also keep your living expenses in check). Not all hobby farmers will stay with it (the glamour of farming wears off eventually) and the high rollers "consolidate" occasionally leaving landlords wanting to do business with stable operators interested in a long term business relationships. You have to live with your neighbors and taking land at any cost usually costs too much in the end. Sorry, lots of words - most of us are in the same boat you are in, Pat PS: I did have a neighbor who joined a country club in a larger town nearby and it got him several contacts for potential land buyers and a few landlords (it may have been worth the $10K fee)
