As I read "Allan's Observations", the editorial column by Allan Nation in The Stockman Grassfarmer I was introduced to a term that I had never heard before, "Titan Farmer". The entire column was actually great and full of tons of little nuggets, but I think I'll tackle them one at a time over the next few days ... for now I just want to discuss this interesting term, "Titan Farmer".So, what is a "Titan Farmer"? Well a "Titan Farmer" is a farmer who farms between 20,000 and 40,000 acres of land, and are even planning on getting bigger. Mr. Nation writes, "...thanks to super-sized machinery and resulting low labor costs per acre these farmers can afford to bid cash-lease land away from farmers in the thousand acre category..." And to tell you how serious these guys are there is even mention of a cash-lease on 2,700 acres right here in my home state of Iowa that went for $400 an acre ... UP FRONT!
There is the future of farming. One of these "Titan Farmers" even told Top Producer Magazine that he has two full-time marketing people that have the sole purpose of finding land to rent and keeping the land owners happy. They use these two marketers to find full-time farmers that are farming farms in the 1,000 acre range or so and then buy them out and hire them to work for the Ultra-Mega-Super-Duper Farm (maybe I just coined a new farming term).
With all of that in mind I believe one of the most interesting quotes from Mr. Nation's column, and subsequently from a column by 1,700 acre farmer John W. Phipps, is this:
"Phipps said in his spring column in Top Producer that there has been little discussion about the long-term impact of an ever-increasing productivity in an industry with a fixed land base."There is a lot to think about there, and to tell you the truth there is a lot there that causes me to pause... As I said this months column was full of little nuggets, so the story does not stop here.
"...a "Titan Farmer" is a farmer who farms between 20,000 and 40,000 acres of land..."
ReplyDelete"...to find full-time farmers that are farming farms in the 1,000 acre range or so and then buy them out and hire them to work..."
A "Titan Farmer" should be more accurately described as an entity that employs farmers to farm 20,000 to 40,000 acres.
It sounds an awful lot like the confinement pork and poultry schemes where a cooperation convinces someone to get a mortgage on a system of buildings and stock them with the cooperation's animals. Without the cooperation's animals, the "farmer" is stuck paying for some worthless buildings that are useless without the animals and feed coming from the cooperation.
When the price for corn (or soybeans or wheat) goes down, who do you think is going to take the financial hit? The Titans, the formerly full-time farmers (now equipment operators), or the landowners? When there are no more full-time independent farmers wanting to rent land, do you think the Titans will continue to pay such high rents to landowners? When the landowners see everything bulldozed on their property by the Titans to better accommodate the super-sized equipment who do you think they will blame?