Start-Up Costs Impossible for Starting Out

Editor:

I always read these articles in your paper about “Calling young farmers” or “There isn’t enough young farmers,” but what these articles fail to mention is the sky-high start-up costs for a young farmer like myself.

My father and I together farm approximately 250 acres. I rent 70 of them.

We plant corn, oats and orchard grass hay. How can any young man or woman afford to buy 200 acres of land at $3,000-$4,000 an acre, build a house, a barn, an equipment shed, and then buy enough equipment, tractors, baler, wagons, hay rake, plow, disk, harrow, corn planter, combine, and the list can go on and on.

I know that you just can’t go buy new. You have to buy used and update as you can. But still, your taking more than a million dollars just for start up, just to sell your corn for record-low prices. Even if you plant half of your land in corn and average 140 bushels per acre and sell it for the average price today of 3.20 a bushel that’s $44,800. Even if that was all profit you still would only make enough to pay 6.5 months on a mortgage loan big enough for start-up.

All I am saying is I read articles all the time about this issue, but no one ever writes an article about the start-up costs or the operating costs that a farmer faces. I am 25 and would love nothing more than to make my living as a farmer full-time, I just don’t see how anyone can do it nowadays unless a farm is handed down to them.

— Ben Kwisnek
Armagh, Pa.