I reckon unless you inherit the farm it’d be way too costly t buy one. So if you aren’t the son of a farmer how’s the way to become one?
Git some acres of land and plant some crops. Hard work, young’un. 'Scuse my corny vernacular.
“I sink, therefore I swam.”
You need to be quite an expert at agriculture to be a farmer nowadays. You’ll find most farmers are outstanding in their field.
I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush
Actually I think you’ll find that in farming areas land is (forgive me) dirt cheap. If you were to sell your expensive house in say, New York or San Francisco you’d have enough to buy some land Iowa with a small house and probably some equipment and enough seed to at least get your foot in the door. That’s for a crop-type farmer. A risky undertaking, tho…considering your success or failure depends on something as unpredictable as mother nature! I don’t really know about raising cattle or that sort of thing. I’m guessing that’s a much bigger investment.
Sarcasm detector? Oh, THAT’S a real useful invention!
Markxxx, I owe you a straight reply to this one, since I went of the OP of your “Revisionist History” thread into a “Hitler vs. Stalin” post.
If you want to be a farmer, why no look in the “Help Wanted” section of most any small-town Midwestern newspaper, under the heading for “Herdsman.” You’ll be offered a job as an employee of a corporately-owned farm, usually one sold to the corporation of a bankrupt or retired family farmer. Your chance of ever being earning enough to buy your own spread is about the same as a spot-welder buying his own shipyard someday, but technically, you’d still be a farmer.
That is, unless, if my dark prediction for the next century comes to pass: corporate farming supplants family farming (oops - already achieved in the 20th C.); corporate enterprise seeks out less-that-minimum-wage labor in state & federal prison populations swollen by POWs from our noble War on Drugs (golly, that’s already come to pass, as well). Private corporations build their own for-profit prisons (darn, I keep predicting things that have already been done!) Last step: Corporate Prison Farms! The corporate bank forecloses on your farm. You can’t even get a job on the free market working the place as a herdsman in competition with convict labor. So you move into a trailer and set up a meth lab to pay the rent, until Fox TV and its corporate police bust you and send you back home to work on your dad’s old farm in chains. Next thing you know, Charleton Heston is running through the street yelling “Soylent Green is made out of pee-pul! Pee-pul!” So presto Markxx: you’re the farmer of the future!
Your deep sea diving suit is ready, me brave lad.
I am a farmer. 2 ways of getting land to farm or ranch on are to rent it from non-farming landowners or you can marry into a family that owns land.
Getting the equiptment necessary is very expensive.
There is a lot more to it than just getting the land and equiptment.
Hmm, why don’t you ask funneefarmer about this? I would suggest, though, that you get a college degree in agriculture before going any further. And there are specialties - are you interested in aquaculture (raising catfish, etc.)? Beef cattle? Dairy cattle? Hogs? Sheep? Crop farming? Large scale crops such as soybeans or cotton, or vegetables for the produce market? Tree farming (Christmas tree farms are a big business in some places)?
Depending on where you live and how you want to start out, land can be pretty cheap. In my area, undeveloped land (covered with trees, brush, rocks, no fences or buildings, no wells or other water, etc.) runs $600 - $800 an acre. Developed farmland is MUCH more expensive - $1500 to $2000 an acre easily, depending on how developed it is.
But the land may be the cheapest thing you buy!
If you’re seriously interested, get a degree and try to get a job with your State Agricultural Department. You’ll get a chance to learn how NOT to do things, an idea of what kind of money is involved, and what sort of farming you like and that works best in your area.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle
One farms.
“To do her justice, I can’t see that she could have found anything nastier to say if she’d thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
Busman’s Honeymoon
I know a guy named Mr. Haney who might be willing to sell…
Get a cow, feed her some hay, squeeze them little doo-dads underneath. No problem. 
Peace,
mangeorge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
Talking Dairy farming here.
I’m pretty much in the “partnership with parents” track for acquiring a farm myself. This farm has been in the family for about 120 years (my great,great grandfather).
My suggestion for getting started, assuming you have a little experience in the field, is rental. You can rent or lease a farm with small acreage for a certain price yearly. Buy your feed and hay from someone else. Feed and hay prices are sometimes unstable but you can fix your costs and also limit the amount of equipment you need by buying all your feed from someone else. Considering the amount of small farmers going out of business means that there is a lot of land that used to be used as hay for dairy cows that people are just cutting and selling the hay on to pay their property taxes. Thus you have limited your need for field equipment to simply a tractor and manure spreader. Tractors of all sizes can be leased for fixed amount of money per year. Now I suppose you need some milk producers. You want to start producing as soon as possible so you buy some bagging heifers (approx. 2 years old ready to have their first calves) for $800 to $1500 each (grade not registered Holsteins). Now as soon as they calve you’re ready to start producing milk.
If you don’t have experience either get some, by working for a farm, or hire someone who does.
I could give you oodles of numbers (I’m just starting my taxes) but you’d get bored real quick.
Best thing to remember is to keep your debt as small as possible if you’re going into small scale farming. If you’re going into the large end of it hire some people with solid ag. educ. and practical background.
As for education, I’ve been doing this for decades (lived on farm full-time since age 10) and I have Bach. in Business Economics. I would suggest a business degree or an agriculture degree (there are a lot of goog 2 yr. programs) for someone getting started. My father grew up on this farm as well and has a degree in Science and Education, he was a science teacher for 10 years before he went back to farming.
“Now as soon as they calve you’re ready to start producing milk.”
—funneefarmer
I’ve heard stories, ff, so I have 2 questions;
- What happens to the calves? I’ve heard that they’re “put down”.
- How often does the cow need to calve to maintain milk production?
Re-reading these queswtions I can see that they may seem kinda loaded. I’m not trolling, I’m curious. A lot of farming practices seem cruel to us city folk, but we use the products anyway.
Peace,
mangeorge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
I am not sure about the farmer thing but I do know how you become a millionaire.
First you get a million dollars…
“I think it speaks to the duality of man sir.”
(private Joker in Full Metal Jacket)
So, aha, you’re a Steve Martin fan, eh? 
Peace,
mangeorge
Oh man… that was AWFUL!!!
–
Teeming Millions: http://fathom.org/teemingmillions
“Meat flaps, yellow!” - DrainBead, naked co-ed Twister chat
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
How do you make a million dollars farming ?
Start with three million dollars.
Calves put down ? Not likely. We sell the bull (male) calves at a local auction. They bring anywhere between $5 (at a VERY weak market last year) to $150 just last month ( a VERY strong market) for week old Holstein calves weighing between 50-120 pounds. The bigger and healthier looking the calves the better the price. There were some reports of small Jersey calves going for less than a dollar after auction commission last year during the worst market. These calves are usually raised for veal or full sized beef, either way they will be kept for at least several more months by whomever purchases them at auction. The female calves we raise ourselves as replacement cows. Many farmers nowadays will sell both male and female and purchase bagging heifers, as mentioned above, so that they don’t have to deal woth the extra work. We prefer raising our own to reduce the chances of our herd becoming infected by disease from another farm. We can also control breeding lines better this way.
As for lactation, we usually run on a yearly cycle. Say a heifer calves for the first time on Jan 1. We will aim to breed her around Apr 1 and then aim to “dry” her off (stop milking her) around Oct 1. She will then freshen again around Jan 1. Note that these are rough numbers, gestation is actually more like 9 mo. and 5 or 6 days. She milks through the second trimester then breaks for the final trimester. Her udder will start filling up again in the 2 or 3 weeks leading up to her due date.
There are several situations where lactation will be stretched or shortened. If for some reason she doesn’t give much milk (inferior breeding or illness) we will shorten the time we milk her by breeding her back early or drying her off earlier in the pregnancy. Lactation can be lengthened if she doesn’t breed back well (hormonal or cyst on the ovaries are problems). Some farmers use BST (bovine somatotropin) and in some cases this will keep cows milk production up for longer periods of time thus extending the time prior to breeding them back.
Any more, fire away.