12/28/2023 0 Comments Profitable hobby farm ideasIf it seems promising, it can be grown to fill the niche in your community. Before you invest a lot of time and equipment in a hobby farm business venture, trial the idea on a small scale. Start small: Hobby farm ideas are a dime a dozen, but what might be profitable in one community may be not be supported in your area.Don’t overlook your agricultural extension office as a valuable resource. Seek hobby farming tips from print resources and the local farming community. Even if your stay-at-home goal is to save money by raising your own food, understanding the time and resources you’ll need will help you achieve your goal quicker and with less risk. Look before you leap: Research is the cornerstone of any good business plan.Whatever the reason, understanding how to start a hobby farm is critical to success. Perhaps you’re looking for an income producing retirement business, a way to stay at home with young children, or want a start-up business which can eventually lead to a career change. All Rights Reserved.Starting a hobby farm for fun or profit can be an exciting adventure. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2019 and/or its affiliates. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc.2019. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. As a result, many have at least one family member take a job outside the farm as a primary means of income. The average farm income for this group is about $8,000 a year, according to USDA. Most of these farmers can no longer support themselves by working the farm alone. These are the 30-cow, 200-acre operations that many consider "traditional farms." There are about three times as many of these smaller farms nationwide as there are the large farms. The Northeast is home to many smaller commercial farms. It's even harder for many of his neighbors. "Grain prices have virtually doubled," he said. But with the high price of corn to feed the cows and gasoline for the tractors, turning a profit has still been tough. With 300 cows and sales that usually top a million dollars a year, Hinsdale has a large commercial farm. Things are very different for Clark Hinsdale, a dairy farmer in northern Vermont. Related: Feds offer help to drought-stricken farmers It also helps that he farms corn and soybeans in Iowa - two crops that are in strong demand in China and elsewhere. He makes decent money, but his tractor is 20 years old and does not have GPS. With sales of about $200,000 a year and profits of about $50,000, Miller considers himself on the borderline between large and small operator. "I call it an information technology gap," said David Miller, an economist at the Iowa Farm Bureau who also has a 350-acre corn and soybean farm outside Des Moines. They're often more savvy at using hedging strategies to protect against future uncertainties. Large farmers also have the capital to put down on new technologies that smaller farmers can't afford, like GPS-guided tractors that drive themselves (and save fuel) and computer programs that monitor the health and productivity of livestock. Subsidies, which total about $14 billion a year, represent about about 5% of the gross cash income for all farms, according to USDA. Plus, farm subsidies from the federal government, which are doled out largely based on the output of the farm, are another advantage. The payoff for more land is well worth the expense.Īnd these large independent farmers often have the means to supply the big food companies like Tyson Foods ( TSN) or Dole ( DOLE) with their raw product. ![]() But the barn to house those extra cows isn't ten times as expensive, nor is the equipment or the laborers to do the work. A farm with 300 dairy cows will produce ten times as much milk as a farm with 30 cows. The biggest driver of their income is their ability to take advantage of their larger size. ![]() Related: Cash-strapped farmers feed candy to cows "People, on average, that are running large commercial farms are making substantial amounts of money," said Jim MacDonald, an economist at USDA, noting their the average household income is over $200,000 a year. ![]() Lumping in farms with sales of over $250,000 a year, and these so called large-scale commercial farms represent just 10% of the country's farms but account for 82% of its overall food production.
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