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Land Value

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Ben H

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How much do you justify buying or leasing land for to run cattle on it?
What is your Carrying Capacity and Stocking Rates?
 
In this area $5,000 per acre is normal - - - this is hard to justify for cattle or row crops.

You must be on top of your game to make it pay. I only buy ground that I feel is going to make good gravel mining in the future and crop or graze it untill needed for the gravel operation.

Can you run cattle on $5,000 per acre ground? Most people don't think so and are selling the pastures in 5 acre mini farms that really mess things up.
 
I would say that today, you would look to pay about $2500 per cow that the land would run on a yearly basis. To make that work for a person starting out you would need a 30 or 40 year contract at low interest. It would be 20 years before you had enough equity in the land that any of it's return would be yours.

Where I live, 200 to 250 head of cattle would be just about a full time job for a young family starting out, and would hardly make a decent living if he had to pay interest on all investments. There are always exceptions of course. After you get more equity and more resources you could most likely expand.
 
I don't know where you could find a place for $2000-$2500 cow unit.
You couldn't do it in any area I am aware of.

People have left the stock market to invest in land. Seems like that it what happens everytime the stock market doesn't perform well for awhile. Just something else we have no control over and have to live with. Like HWM points out, there are some good sides to that, however.
 
I agree with Clarence and FH....Land prices around here have gone out of sight...You can't even buy into a grazing district (where you actually don't own anything just get the lease) for $2500 a unit...And with the land speculators raising the prices trying to get a long term lease is out....3 years is about the most because they want to rebid it with the raising prices...

We used to have some long term tribal leases- but thats about a thing of the past too with the corruption and graft on the reservation....Whoever greases the palm of the right tribal land board member best gets the lease for that year- and sometimes you don't know until May 1 that you don't have the lease.....

Only ones I know that are buying land with the actual intent of ranching are the ones from the mountains that are selling their ranchs at huge prices for subdivisions or to the Ted Turners of the world and then have the money to reinvest over here in the shortgrass country......
 
Can't help but feel for some of you in that position. What can a person do when money comes in and buys the countrysides up for whatever dollar it takes to get it? Our area is just starting to see the increases. Pasture land when I was a teenager was still $200/acre, now, it's $500 and up. Some has sold as high as $1000, and it's short native grass. 10 pairs/year sort of stuff. I just shake my head to think how bad it's going to get, as more and more oil money keeps coming in the area.

Our 4500 acres is all in a block, which is a real blessing. We've conceded to the fact that we just have to do more with what we've got as opposed to try and outbid the barons and Hutterites. A colony just took possession of a farm 5 miles west of us on Saturday. They bought it 2 months ago, 7000 acres of crop with a hog barn and 3 homes. Supposedly went for 12 million. Who knows?

Northern, did you hear about Doug Price buying 33 quarters of SK real estate? Paid $26,000/quarter or something like that. I think it's in the Yorkton area.
 
PureCountry said:
Can't help but feel for some of you in that position. What can a person do when money comes in and buys the countrysides up for whatever dollar it takes to get it? Our area is just starting to see the increases. Pasture land when I was a teenager was still $200/acre, now, it's $500 and up. Some has sold as high as $1000, and it's short native grass. 10 pairs/year sort of stuff. I just shake my head to think how bad it's going to get, as more and more oil money keeps coming in the area.

Our 4500 acres is all in a block, which is a real blessing. We've conceded to the fact that we just have to do more with what we've got as opposed to try and outbid the barons and Hutterites. A colony just took possession of a farm 5 miles west of us on Saturday. They bought it 2 months ago, 7000 acres of crop with a hog barn and 3 homes. Supposedly went for 12 million. Who knows?

Northern, did you hear about Doug Price buying 33 quarters of SK real estate? Paid $26,000/quarter or something like that. I think it's in the Yorkton area.
Click to expand...
Boy Pure your right about the Hutterites,they outbid everyone in our area,we're sitting close to 1000 an acre because of Hutterites :?
 
Land prices here have gone crazy. Land that was $1,000 an acre three years ago is now $3 -$4,000 an acre. Stocking rate in normal year is 3 acres per cow unit. So, you can see a cow can't even pay the interest let alone any production costs. Hope the stock market revs up and puts a stop to this land speculation.
 
I heard rumors that 28 quarters were sold to a single buyer for $28,000 per quarter, and it was said to be the price family....not sure though, really just rumours. There was a huge auction at Stockholm Sask, yes near Yorkton....check out the Western Producer.
 
28,000 a quarter isn't a whole lot is it?Did they sell it that low because one buyer bought it or is that the going rate there?
 
Come South...land here...any ol' piece of dirt is now worth $20K an acre....no matter what you intend to do with it!!!

I'm sitting on my dirt till it's $50K an acre...then gonna buy myself an island!!!

Be nice to be.... gonna be invitation only!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
Cattleman said:
I heard rumors that 28 quarters were sold to a single buyer for $28,000 per quarter, and it was said to be the price family....not sure though, really just rumours. There was a huge auction at Stockholm Sask, yes near Yorkton....check out the Western Producer.
Click to expand...

It was 33 quarters, and yes, it was the Price family.
 
We went on a grazing tour to Stockholm a couple of years ago. There's lots of land there that was really overworked, and is not very productive any more. It's light and sandy, and just can't stand continuous cropping. Now cattle are moving in and guys are putting it down to grass, which is what that type of land is meant for in the first place.
 
land around here is a good heavy claybase land and it is bringing around $325 to $370 an acre. Grazing capacity on a quarter section would be around 30-50 pairs per quarter.
 
My area you can run 40 - 60 pairs/quarter on _OK_ tame grass. Quarter of land will run $30,000 - $50,000. That Yorkton area sure seems to be a hot spot, and land appears to be selling cheap. Don't know if most of the cattlemen are getting out of the business or whats happening down there.

Rod
 
I've been lurking here briefly, and have really hesitated to post, but given as this topic has come up, I'll go ahead. As a newbie here, I hope I'm not asking a question that's been asked a million times before, or that's irritating everyone.

Here's the deal. I come from a family that had a place decades ago. It was sold when my grandfather died, and my father was a teen. My father worked at something in town his whole life, but always had an interest in what he started out doing. Just before he died, we were getting set to try to buy a small place. His early death sort of took care of that.

For the past ten years I've worked at building up some cattle, and hoped to eventually buy a place. If I break even and don't starve, that'd be fine. It's what I've always wanted to do. I only have about 50 heard, and I'm working a town job that some would classify as a "good job", although it's one I don't care anything about, as all I've ever wanted to do was raise cattle.

In this past ten years land prices have gone up and up. In order to buy a 250 cow place, I'd have to be a millionaire now. I run my cattle on a relatives place, but I'm capped out at 50.

I suppose I'd continue to do this, and contiue to hope, no matter what. But I'd like to try to ranch full time. I'm in a spot where I can't see my way to that. Anyone have any advice? If the advice is "give up", I'm afraid I've given myself that advice a zillion times, and won't head it, although just knowing it's hopeless may be a bit of an advance of sorts.
 
A while back I was looking to see what it would cost to pick up a cattle ranch out west, didn't take long to ask, who in the hell can afford to pay that for running cattle. The problem where I live is not just high cost but that everyone sells pieces of land and now almost everything is small and spread out. Fortunately we can get good pasture yields and have a higher Carrying Capacity. When I went to Italy with our Dairy Cattle Club back in college, they were paying 80000 over there, not sure if that was hectacre or metric acre or what.
there is a program in Maine called Farmlink to keep farms going, check out what my state is trying to do here
http://www.state.me.us/agriculture/mpd/farmlink/
I haven't participated in this program at this time.
 

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