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by reaperman 813 days ago
> In the US that's exactly the case

> No need to wish, instead give farmers cell phones

The people doing the farming in the USA are rarely the people who make money from the farms.

Some people like to throw out the fact that almost 90% of farms in America are small (<$350,000/year) family-owned and operated farms. But that 90% of farms accounts for only 20% of total farm production, and over 90% of their household-income came from non-farming activities (spouse working other job = 90% of household income for small farms).

The ~5% of farms which are the largest farms account for about 60% of gross farm production in the USA. These few farms employ about 2 million hired farmhand laborers - generally you won't see the farm owners doing fieldwork.
1 comments
pasttense01 813 days ago
It depends on the crop. Corn and soybeans are massively mechanized so you need very little labor so often it is the farm owners doing the fieldwork.
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reaperman 812 days ago
Iowa is seeing a “disappearing middle” due to farm consolidation - small farms are staying about the same but the largest farms are growing in size by eating medium sized farms.

Currently 50% of Iowa farmland is owned by the 8.7% of farms that are large enough it would take between 20 days to 6 months to harvest with a single combine (the 200 very largest farms are 7700 acres on average, a combine harvests 50-75 acres of corn per day). Some of these farms you’d likely want 10+ combines to harvest corn in the peak window.

So these farms are looking at $10-100 million in farmland alone, and another $1-10 million in combines.

An acre of Iowa cornfield costs $11,400 and yields $170-350 profit per acre depending on the year. Profits are on the low end right now. So the smaller “large farms” that start at 1,000 acres would be expected to earn a profit of $170,000-350,000 per year on $10 million of land.

https://www.thegazette.com/agriculture/2022-ag-census-five-t...

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Re...

https://www.farmprogress.com/crops/iowa-farm-margins-tighten

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