With how heavily subsidised corn is in the US it would an achievement to fail at turning a profit.
AG 101 “How to lose money on corn”
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Rent more land than you own.
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Buy the cheapest seed you can find to “save money”
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Grow the corn non-irrigated
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Use custom operators to fertilize, plant, spray, and harvest but minimize what you put down to “save money”.
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Gamble the entire year on the commodities market selling your crop.
Even with subsidies this is a recipe for losing money. These “farmers” tend to consistently lose money until they eventually go under after all the equity in the land they own is gone.
It’s so common that entire generations have grown corn at a loss. Why, entire states built their economies on the losses they found from corn. It’s such an unprofitable crop that only half of the United States grows it, and it’s a pretty poor country.
You are looking at survivorship bias. Look at the number of farms statistics. It’s been steadily declining for a very long time. Every year thousands of farms go bankrupt or sell out mostly following the above steps. Because of the large amount of equity in the land value and the relatively small net return or loss it takes a long time for them to go bankrupt. On average around 15-20 years of poor management.
Now the ones that survive follow AG 102 “How to make money growing corn.”
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Own the land outright without any mortgage.
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Do research plots to evaluate corn varieties and purchase the seed with the highest potential net return. Do not be loyal to any brand/supplier.
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Invest in irrigation, even in areas that usually get enough rainfall. Running a pivot 1-2 times at the right time can equal 100+ bu higher yield.
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Purchase and maintain your own equipment. Replace equipment on the good years, repair it on the bad one.
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Open bid on your inputs. Offer no loyalty to any one supplier, do your own application when possible. Buy generics and cheaper equivalent inputs when possible.
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Manage your risk when selling. Contract the bulk of your sales early to guarantee a return ad cover your costs.
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Do not get on the debt cycle of paying for inputs by taking short term loans. Maintain a healthy reserve from good years to cover the bad ones
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My dude, what lemmies are you subbed to? I want to discuss these things somewhere, can’t find anything reasonable.
I keep hearing this, but someone has to be making money on corn or there wouldn’t be corn. My guess is that the margin is so thin that the only way to put any appreciable amount of money away to get you through a market dip is to do tremendous volume, which would cause the industry to tend to push out small farmers, which kicks off a feedback loop because the big conglomerates are even bigger and can take even longer bad times, so they can snap up even more failed small farmers, etc etc ad nauseaum.
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…I should start growing corn
We use it for basically everything from food and beverage sweetener to car fuel.
also it goes in butts sometimes.
Maybe he got the subsidies too.
While I don’t doubt that statement, this location in Interstellar was filmed in Alberta, Canada.
If anyone thinks farming is for simpletons, come fucking try it. Bring your tickets in heavy duty mechanics, welding, fitting, instrumentation, and millwrighting. An accounting degree with minors in veterinary science, commerce, soil biology, animal science and mychorrizhal studies will be an asset. Also, you’re going to need a CDL and the ability to operate about 30 types of heavy equipment without dying because there aren’t a lot of safeties on anything. If you’re slow, you’re dead.
Now take all that and add a credit score sufficient to borrow about $2 million for operating line, inputs, salaries, land rent, equipment maintenance and leasing and custom work. Then come talk to me about talents.
On the accounting, I’ve done taxes for a few cattle ranches. They do their bookkeeping with literal pencil and paper. The handwriting can be difficult to read, but lemme tell ya, they are always accurate to the penny and absolutely no nonsense. Far better than most of the urban small businesses out there.
Well, I end up at year-end balancing all the forward grain contracts and put/call options against actual sales, with dockage and off-cheque charges for the various commissions, and have to figure out crop insurance receipts and outlays against their audit and my sales. Then you need to reconcile the cattle sales at auction with all the shrinkage, auction fees and cattle commission charges. Because chem gets ordered but not all is used, I’ll often have to build a ledger showing where the refunds come from, and that will set off a cascade of reversals for various incentive programs and grant money we get to reduce nitrogen usage that all have to be explained. Don’t even get me started on the various environmental grant programs we are a part of in order to try to build a sustainable land base.
I’ve tried to just let this stuff go straight to the accountant, and it was an utter shitshow, and these accountants have worked with farms in our area and size for decades. And I completely understand, because I deal with these things all year and I still end up scratching my head how a lot of these companies build statements, and catch them in errors just because I’m so used to dealing with this stuff.
I tried growing a bed of veggies during the pandemic and miserably failed lol. I’m someone who has been growing 100+ houseplants for years so I’m not a novice.
I have deep respect for farmers, not just because of the talent and hard work but also because of the courage it takes to do it (like your life can be ruined if there isn’t enough rain one year).
I have been growing beds of veggies for years and I don’t have a fucking PhD in whatever the fuck dude said above. Large scale farming is a whole lot different than a backyard garden. Behold the fruits of my labors as a simpleton
And this is the argument I give people who complain that we give farmers subsidizes…food is cheap and plentiful for a reason.
The Mitchell and Webb Situation send their regards:
Didn’t even need to click the link.
“Eggs! Out of their f**ing bums!”
I quote this all the time to my gf. I sleep on the couch now.
I think you’ll find he got that profit from taxpayers lol
When in doubt, you’re the fish.
I’ve heard this and don’t understand why he didn’t just pay a farmer to use their field.
In the script for Interstellar, the setting for the farm was written as being surrounded by corn fields with mountains in the distance. There are not a lot of places in the world, apparently, that can have both. So the filmmakers were taking a $100K gamble to grow corn in Western Canada, outside Calgary, where the film was shot.
I feel like that is what they mean, but now I’m not sure.
That seems unlikely. It would be hard to imagine that the total costs of planting and raising a movie-set quality corn field with industry labor rates would cost less than the returns on a 500 ac harvest of (I’m presuming) silage-quality corn.
what makes planting this field, letting it grow to fruition and then selling the fruit significantly more expensive than what they do at every other for-profit corn farm?
A movie-set must have certain features (full, even, ready for shooting on schedule) and there are millions of dollars on the line - you don’t just plant a field and hope it meets spec - I would think someone was making case it would be ready for filming. That that’s time and effort. The movie industry unions have livable - one might say exceptional - wages, even for someone just checking to make sure the corn field is maturing properly, much less planting and tending the crop.
An un-referenced medium article says he invested $100,000 in the corn field and he generated $162,000 in revenue, with no indication of the expenses of monitoring or harvesting. The best result would be $62k (compared to the $20,000,000 Nolan was paid for the film) in profit if the “investment “ included all of the miscellaneous expenses I mentioned above (as well as the lawyers cost for acquisition, travel and time spent finding the plot and securing all of the contracts for farming and harvest) and wasn’t absorbed in the “film budget”.
That a farm has a periodic yield while this sounds like a one off thing
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Idk he couldve just found a farmer to grow the corn for him and paid up-front.
Actually sounds like a solid investment for the right price. A globally known multi billionnaire would get the right price.
Farming? No. Flipping investments? Yes.
