Finding a profit in farming?

If you are attempting to farm in a conventional manner, ie. raising commodity crops, then it would be difficult to do on small acreages. The profit margins are thin and the money is made on volume. If you are hauling your grains to an elevator or livestock to a sale barn, then it is valued the same as any other comparable commodity.

An illustration: I helped a friend haul some calves to town to sell through the ring. They were some good looking Red Angus calves; he even had the Red Angus Certification for them. After the sale, the buyer who picked them up was trying to find a feedlot that would take a load of red hided cattle. The Red Angus certification had no value or importance to him or the feedlot, though the producer had kept the records to obtain that certification.

For small acreages, I would suggest those kind of crops that can be differentiated; instead of hard red winter wheat, what about heritage seed crops for something like Turkey Red? Or an open Pollinated variety of corn? If you want to raise livestock, how can you market them directly?

I would start with what you already have and sell the excess and grow from that. You have chickens, how about farm eggs? You have goats, what about raising goats for slaughter? There seems to be a good market for that in Kansas, especially among the Hispanic populations.

With commodities, the only way to control profit is to cut costs per unit. With direct sales or differentiated products, you can raise the price, if the market will bear it, or you can cut costs to make it profitable. If you are good at marketing, go for it.

Cash costs can be fairly low, but the true costs, opportunity costs for example, need to be accounted for as well. Pasture is not as close to free IMO, as some may think. If not pasture, could it be growing cash crops, or rented to other farmers for a good price? Hay, even your own hay, could be sold for X cents a lb., not to mention the costs of doing the haying, parts, repairs, and depreciation.

My point is, it does not take much to get a cow to cost a buck and a bit a day, or 400 bucks to keep a cow for a year.

Minerals, fencing, handling, labor, diesel/gas, parts. These all add up fast.

I know what you mean about keeping costs low, and you can do that indeed. But saying keeping a cow for a year is nearly free, is not accurate in my view. What about replacements? They need to be costed as well, and right now, they are going to add a couple hundred dollars to the cost per year, per cow.

Just some other stuff to think on. Some people are real sticklers regarding costing labor and such. I personally am not one of them. As a farmer, if I kept track of my labor and costed it out, I would be depressed all the time! lol.

There is a market for grass fed cattle and organically grown just about anything/everything.

Where I live, farmers are doing very well. They are supported by the local markets, restaurants, cafe's, deli's, and community. Organic meat, produce, and raw milk is big here (we have a certified raw milk dairy here).

It is important to find out what is a local demand for you.

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You're right about most of that, but remember the OP's question isn't about making a living from farming...it's just about covering the insurance and taxes. They apparently already have a situation that does that (the neighbor renting it) but there's an opportunity cost there, too...she loses the opportunity to do what she wants with the farm.

Farming is a business, but it doesn't always have to be run strictly by the numbers if it's not your livelihood. A couple hundred bucks per cow per year for replacements? From a strictly business sense, maybe...but that's opportunity cost, not money out of pocket. From a homesteading "cover the land costs" sense, in my opinion that's not the right way to look at it. There's nothing wrong with making less by running it more casually, as long as you're happy with the results. I'd say the OP has a lot of room for inefficiency and learning curve, considering the minimal results she's seeking.

No doubt about that point. I guess my original reply was to the post that said 10 cows returned 11 000 bucks. With ten cows, those costs will be there IMO. Otherwise you end up spending 20 or 30 000 every 8 or ten years for new breeding stock, one way or another, whether retaining and losing revenue there, or buying in...

Still a nice little chunk of change even that way considering the minimal work...100 thousand in, 20 thousand out. I'd take it. Multiply by ten and you have a full time living...but then you have to pay closer attention to the numbers or you can go broke overnight...which I did three times in my first five years.

Get to know your local foodie groups. Paleo, Weston A. Price, gourmets... What are they looking for and not finding? What do they wish was available more months out of the year? What are they sitting on waiting lists for?

If you want to start very small, look into seasonal greens and other short turnover heritage vegetables. If you have a nice variety not available at the public market already then you can do fairly well. Stuff that has a longer turnover you have to try to make up all the sales at the end of the season, and you can't change your strategy mid-year if arugula just isn't selling well this year and you need to plant more baby spinach instead.

This may be overly optimistic, I don't see $50 per pound in my neighborhood, but you can ask for more if you have unique varieties than if you sell run of the mill foods: http://localbusinessplans.com/microgreens/

Her goal is to subsistence farm to provide as much food as possible for four people and to sell just enough to pay the taxes.

So .... really she has way more land than she needs to meet these goals.

ouch!!!

This might be a little off topic but I think a lot of it has to do with what you can do that fits into your regular routine. When I worked in the city and lived on the farm people used to ask me if I raised this or that so I started bringing in the extra from the garden.Then they started asking if I could raise this or that and from there I started making almost as much on veggy's as I was at work and all I had in it was a little extra time in the garden.I could bring in a full size pickup full of veggy's 2-3 times a week and take cash home.When I left that job,making a special trip to the city was out .
There is some real money to be made transporting farm fresh foods,meat included,into the city.

Wade

Broke on paper...hurt the ego more than anything...but learned more from it than from my expensive degrees.

Some really good answers to think about. Your first request was to take care of family you can easily grow enough to feed your family plus. Here is something that has worked for me raise fresh produce for restaurants mushrooms, lettuce, kale, etc. you might even sell at a farmers market. As mentioned their is a good market for meat goats, theirs people that travel all over the country buying goats. I would focus on what you enjoy the most and follow threw. In my area beef is high has been for awhile. Heck you can have a small green house and sell flowers or plant a big bed of bulb flowers and sell them.

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