I watched a few local family farms do well. The ones that were most successful, just like any other business operated on a cash basis.
They did not have a banker with his fist in the John Deere dealers pocket, telling them they would not get an operating loan unless they also bought a tractor twice as big as they needed with all the comforts of the Taj Mahal.
But most fiscally wise young farmers live like paupers for the first twenty years while paying off the land, and livestock, if it is that type of operation. And today, most of those young people coming from parents wise enough to operate a successful family farm have a college degree.
As they watch their College class mates go into careers which will be paying 10 times what they will see from the farm, it is very tempting to abandon the farm life for a bigger payday.
One has to love the life, because it just does not pencil out any other way.
The one thing going for it, when you are ready to retire, you are sitting on a fortune in real estate, livestock, and equipment. That is, if you are wise enough to have kept it out of the bank's name.
