Is there such a thing as owning too much land

if i could afford it yes i would.


dean

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greetings from the far east of the western world

No, I don’t think it’s greedy if the person intends to use the land for homesteading type lifestyle. It’s easy to use 1000 acres, or even 10,000 acres when you’ve grown up living the lifestyle and know what to do with the land. The people who work hard to acquire land deserve to own it. If people give up their dream of owning land and go for the suburban life because it’s easier, then they would probably have given up on farming or ranching when they discovered how hard it can be. People who opt for the easy path usually will not make good homesteaders.

What makes you think most of us have given little thought to the implications of our desires? I agree that it would be irresponsible to buy 100's or 1000's of acres with no idea of what to do with the land. BUT... some of us, possibly many of us, have grown up in this lifestyle. I make do with less land cause I can’t afford to buy more, and there isn’t more land available in my area if I could afford it. I would definitely know what to do with it, and I think many of the people here do know how to manage large tracks of land. It’s not that hard to know what to do and how to do it. The hard part is trying to fit all the work into a 24 hour day.

I come from a family where most of them owned 100's of acres each. Most of them sold it off instead of passing it down the family. They were of the opinion that you have to earn it, not have it handed to you. They didn’t take into consideration that the world is filling up with people and prices are sky high. Todays young people can’t go out and buy a huge ranch like our grandparents did, and we sure can’t homestead it like our great grandparents did. Today it takes money, not just work to acquire a piece of land large enough to make a living from.

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$100 an acre for land, held 30 years, and currently worth $1000 means that you have an annualized rate of return on your investment of 7.98%. And that's not factoring in the costs of tax payment and any maintenance.

I'd call that a fairly good investment, but not a great one.

Now 30 years of enjoyment and peace and quiet? That's where the real investment value is.

Lynda

This is a joke question, right?

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YEAH THAT!

If I could, I would purchase 10,000 acres! Too much land never! QB

Montana is all I ask for

guess you do have a point but Id rather see a person buy it that's going to keep it not developed than see another walmart, or golf course or something like that, I guess we could all stop buying land and let the developers have it
if people that care for the land and want to preserve it dont buy it, who do you think will?

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We have 500 acres, and if we could afford to buy more, we would!

Tracy

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How many acres is the lake?

How much are the annual taxes?

Mineral rights, any stuff dumped on it, is it considered wetlands? Am I allowed to build on it?

Doesn't take much land to feed a family. Yes, you can have too much if you cannot control the squatters and poachers who might go on it and molest your animals.

Unless you have an acual use for every square inch (to include just walking around and enjoying it) your just pi$$ing tax money to the government.

Then there's the strife you will put on the kids when you pass away and they end up fight over it, or the lake rights, or the prime spot with the house. After several generations, it's be broken up and some parts will be golf courses owned by the japanese, others will be walmarts owned by Indians (not native americans), etc.

The only way to prevent Walmarts is for nobody to shop there and for us to control the population.

Perhaps it's selfish to grab land. But why not enjoy it while we can? As many continue to have large families, and immigration goes unchecked, it's just a matter of time before there's no opportunity for much acreage. I feel sorry for future generations. I suppose if we were truly unselfish, we'd do what it takes to control the population, but we don't really care.

Unmanaged land that returns no monetary yield on investment still returns great value for many reasons such as biodiversity maintenace and possibly just a place to walk thru and around.

The world is being rapidly fragmented with increasingly fewer remaining wild/fallow areas.

I bought and still own a tract of land about 30 miles from here up on a high plateau that includes about 1/4 of a mile of wild brook trout stream, a very rare habitat on private land in western North Carolina.

While at times I have advertised the place for sale, I have asked about 6 times what I paid for the place just 12 years ago so no one has taken it and I likely will continue just to let the place be as it has been.

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I read through most of these posts and Matthew, it was yours that was already going through my head by the time I got to the end.

No, it isn't greedy so long as your realise you are, at best, only a caretaker and what you take, you must give back.

We own about 200 acres of which approximtely 1/3rd is regenerating native bush (or what you call woodlands). In this there is only one Kauri tree and a very young one at that. The Kauri is considered the giant of the forest in this country and it was nearly decimated for it's wonderful timber. There are several very old Puriri, another wonderful tree that was used extensively for fencing and bridging as it doesn't need to be treated. Sitting in one of our paddocks are two Puriri bridge stringers that we pulled out of the river. They would be over 100 years old and there is no sign of rot. I'm getting away from the point which is that it is up to us to ensure that this heritage is there for future generations. I'm no greenie or tree-hugger but do appreciate our native forests and would like it to continue so that others can too.

As for the land that has been opened up, it should support the family but the excess can be shared - and this is what farming should be about. People need food and it is only going to come from farms whether they be livestock, orchards or vegetables etc. We take all our beef, mutton, pork, eggs and vegetables from our land, the rest is sold. The return from the sales goes back into rates (taxes), fertiliser, replacement stock, fencing, water reticulation and general maintenance (as well as the bloody mortgage ) and when we leave this land I hope that it's in as good a shape, if not better, than when we came on to it.

Cheers,
Ronnie

I am really puzzled over the convictions expressed that larger acreages must be "managed" or productive in some fashion.

A person cannot own a large parcel just to enjoy? Must it all be income producing, be fruitful, be used?

I don't think so.

If I had a large acreage I would not expect to use all of it. Habitat is just as important in other ways as producing food or other crops. It just pays differently

Good question, thanks for asking!

In my opinion, it boils down to two main factors. 1. Personal responsibility, being a good steward of the land, that sort of thing. 2. Mother Nature, bless her heart, if left to her own devises, simply does not do a good job!

I do not know how much to go into personal responsibility, but if a person wants to own real estate, I feel they should educate themselves in what that intails. And there are a lot of resources out there to help us.

Mother Nature- let's start with trees. Trees actually go through a life cycle, like vegetables. There comes a point when then they need to be harvested. Now the federal govt, in all its wisdom, just kidding folks, does sponser many, many programs to help the small landholder manage their timber and land. There is a cost sharing program called "Timber Stand Improvement" where you get paid to improve the woods. This is where Mother Nature (MN) is weak. You never see MN calling in a team of horses to selectively harvest mature trees. Timber stand Improvement also creates improved animal habitat, another area MN is weak in.

Fences; MN does not do fences, roads or trails. Someone mentioned wanting land to have for walking. Trails do not "appear". They need to be built and maintained if you expect to be able to walk your land.

Permaculture is an excellent management tool to enhance property, but, again, requires work on the part of the land owner.

Back to the Fed. Govt....the Bureau of Land Management, manages 264 million acres, the national Park Service manages 84 million acres, the Forest Service manages 193 million acres. I suspect all this managed land is taken for granted with people not understanding the effort that goes into the management.

The small land owner has the services of the Soil and Water Conservation Service. There is also a progam of Tree Farms, through the American Tree Farm system. This is a program to help you manage your designated tree farm.

I feel a strong sense of responsibility to improve my property. I have carefully read this thread and looked at folks' motivations. It is very important to understand your motivations. Very few people said they wanted 100 to 200 hundred acres with the intent to improve the land. But actually, mosts folks did not say why they wanted the extra land, just that they did.

Remember, there is less than 3 acres of fairly good land in the world for each person now, less than 2 acres if you want relatively good land. So, if you have more than that, you are fortunate.

Thats an interesting view, Goatsareus, alot of hubris but the conventional line. I think over time human management of any land leads to degradation of the land, look at the desertification that is rapidly spreading across the world and thats just one type of result from the human disturbance of land.

Temporary, short-term (decades or a generation or 2) yields can be achieved for people's immediate benefit by subverting the natural processes but in no way anywhere can the natural processes be improved upon. There's ultimately loss resulting from most any human activity.

The natural processes can somewhat absorb assault and eventually fully rehabilitate and reclaim land from the effects of humans but only if the numbers of people are very limited.

I think that if it takes 64 acres to provide the needs of a family then they would optimally own 640 acres so that in any generation only 1/10th. of the land is adversely affected and the land has 9 generations to recover before being used again and by this formula the world should be occupied by no more than 100 to 150 million people and we are now what? 40 to 60 times that number, still growing fast and many still do not see that there is a crisis.

Sure, with management, tall, straight pines can be grown in some places in just 20 to 40 years (for one rotation, maybe 2 but the yields will ultimately drop to nearly nothing) and the trees would compare in no way with a 400 year stand of trees. Same thing with crops and pasture. Wild animals are not so sparsely found in natural areas by accident. The 'natural gain' inherit in this world requires a great amount of land for even a few large animals. Anytime people use land to produce beyond the natural gain, inputs from outside the system are involved leading eventually (quicker than many think) to degradation of the land.

__________________
Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny
Bees make honey, who needs money, monopoly
...
World pollution is no solution

We will be buying the land. In the future we will build a rough cabin in the middle of it to vacation on. dh and his brothers will hunt off the land. We have no plans to move there but its only 30 miles away so we will be able to visit often.

I wanted to thank everyone for their opinions

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Enjoy it Dixiegal!!!! Good luck with your future cabin project!

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Just because you own some land does not mean every square foot of it has to be 'managed'. If you own an acre, well, you might have to destroy anything natural on it for your garden or animals.

I 'use' very little of my land. Cows graze on half of it, on a seasonal nature. 3/4 of that end of the property is being allowed to grow back into forest (and ~10 acres of that I'm rebuilding the wetlands that were once there). The other half the goats use (maybe have grazed down 3 or 4 acres out of 80).

In the past I've tried to buy every parcel adjoining mine when it came up for sale. The one time I was unsuccessful, a dang housing development for rich old coots was built. I'm of the mind I'll preempt any potential bad neighbors by buying it before they can. Have 170 now, would have an additional 200 if the folks I negotiated with for their parcels had kept their word. (some folks 'word' isn't worth a bucket of warm spit...)

No, you can't have too much land.

Next best thing to not owning too much land, is having out of state absentee landowners, who don't care if you lightly use their land. ( No Blueberry to tempt me... )

I bless my lucky stars I'll never have to worry about neighbors in sight of my current or future home.

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I think it depends on where you are and how you view management of natural resources outside of cultivation. Here in Arizona, underbrush is cleared regularly from the national forests up north to reduce the risk of fire. I'm sure that before people built homes in amongst the trees it wasn't such a problem when a forest fire raced through, but it seems every time there's a fire up north, people lose their homes. And now that we are having problems with diseased trees (due no doubt to the drought and bark beetles), more intensive management is apparently required in order to keep the remaining living trees healthy.

Now, I don't know if these kinds of conditions exist everywhere, but around here if I had a large quantity of forested land I'd be really worried about having more than I can handle. There are so many imported bugs, diseases, weeds, etc. that wildlands didn't encounter before the rest of the world discovered North America, not to mention the alteration of the natural order of things caused by human pressures.