Green Acres

I have spent my entire life in rural areas in Illinois.  Although I was not born into a farm family, I did a large amount of physical labor for farming and related operations growing up, and over the past 39 years I have represented lots of farmers as an attorney.  Farming as a way of life tends to be romanticized by non-farmers.  Farming as a way of making money tends to be overlooked.  Farming is a complicated business operation with large start up costs, specialized skills required, strict time tables and uncertain markets.  An economy of scale is necessary to make money on the entire operation.  For example, the cash rent on an average acre of farm land in Illinois is around $230.00.  Thus farming one hundred acres, assuming some calamity does not occur, might net around $30,000.00.  Of course the net does not include the pay of the farmer, or the various farm hands.  Having a mortgage on the farm will play havoc with the net. Thus a farmer in Central Illinois needs to farm as much land as he possibly can, including land he owns and land he rents, either on a cash basis or a share crop basis.  Many farmers farm and have an off farm job, and that also applies to their spouses.

The main money in farming is ultimately selling the land.  This is complicated by capital gains tax, so usually farm land is sold after the owner dies, when a stepped up basis in the land applies and no capital gains tax is paid if the land is sold within a relatively short time after death.  This greatly simplifies a very complicated process.

I have often read a great deal of rubbish on Catholic web sites, especially when the subject of distributionism comes up, and people wax eloquently about owning a piece of land and raising their own food.  Raising vegetables and fruit as a hobby is one thing, trying to farm as a job is another.   Farming is a tough business and people wishing to enter into it as a business need to think long and hard before doing so.