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The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#151

Post by kwere »

crtified wrote: post #38

Low wage industries struggle in high wage countries. Globalization displaces natural local supply and demand outcomes. The above two factors result in some very complex status quos. For example, take the country of New Zealand, whose significant apple growing industry is largely for export purposes - ostensibly, sending good fresh highly-valued NZ apples to other countries, where they'll fetch max $. Problem: apple w…

Thats looks more like dynamics of seasonal jobs in developed economies. People get stable jobs that provide income all year around and avoid hustling for low value odd jobs. The only ways to fill those positions are employing special class workers: unenployed welfare recipients, prisoners, students, foreign unskilled workers, etc... . Foreign unskilled workers usually are the easiest to get

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#152

Post by kwere »

Maursault wrote: post #50
tsunamifury wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to know why entitled and toxic millennials forced your friend off his farm and into accounting…

His nephew feels the farm belongs to him, saw my friend, one of the three actual legitimate heirs, as a threat. It was not just toxicity, it was escalating violence. Though my friend is the strongest man I know and could literally tie his skinny nephew into a double knot, and I could tell you stories of his ridiculous physicality that I personally witnessed, he is a pacifist, nonviolent, quite gentle for someone with…

>Farming is extremely lucrative

I dont know the margins in US, but in italy, considering all capital costs, margins for cereals farms average 2% before tax (inheriting lands makes numbers look bigger but one has to factor land costs).

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#153

Post by JackFr »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #116
ghaff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not even that expensive. I live a town or two further out. One of my neighbors has a small apple tree orchard and the other has a Christmas tree farm. It's pretty accessible to Boston for the day but not really close. My old farmhouse was the original property for about a 75 acre farm. It's been renovated but certainly not a multi-million dollar property. You can actually get out of Boston fairly quickly to…

IMO it's due go higher property taxes, the New England states have some of the highest property taxes and high taxes overall which makes land speculation expensive. CA has extremely low property taxes with a loopholes that push the average even lower Even just a few miles outside NYC, you can get a decent house in NJ for 500K but the property taxes alone will be around 5-10K.

Which is literally why you have to farm the land. The agricultural rate can be substantially lower than the residential rate.

I don’t know about MA, but in NY for 7 acres or more you just need to average $10,000 in sales for 2 years. Interestingly if you have les than 7 acres the threshold goes up, but you can lease land to bring yourself over the 7 acres. Additionally, since property tax rates are set at the local municipality level an ag assessment uses state law to cap what the municipality can claim.

This is not tax advice, and I don’t know the law in MA, but probably not to far from NY’s.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#154

Post by JackFr »

oh_sigh wrote: post #43
sokoloff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard isn't particularly close to Boston. It's 25-30 miles outside of Boston and outside of even I-495, the outer loop highway encircling Boston. (Still River, where the farm is, is on the far end of Harvard.) Article says they used to farm two fields they owned and three they leased and have backing away from some of the leased land. From a quick search (unverified/fact-checked), it looks like it's a <20 acres of…

The farmers didn't need to farm for 60 years either, if they just let land till I follow, it would still be worth just as much to a developer.

They gave to farm to keep their taxes down.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#155

Post by JackFr »

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #7

From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming. From a personal standpoint, the sensible thing to do is to scale it down to subsistence gardening for yourself and your family. That is what my family does. I remember, when I was still young, they still used to sell some produce. Nowadays it is entirely consumed by the family or gifted out. The benefit of this, is that you are free from economic…

This is not a struggling family farm. These are landowners who farm as a tax dodge or a hobby.

For those on the thread who keep pointing out that this is not in Boston and the real estate isn’t worth that much, I would counter that it’s difficult to believe that a family who’s held real estate in Massachusetts for 350 years is not doing ok.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#156

Post by tomrod »

youngNed wrote: post #137
jkepler wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its an open secret (like the open mystery in Ephesians 3:9,10), can you provide some sources to substantiate your claim? Thanks!

An open secret is something which is widely known to be true amongst people, but which is denied officially, for that very reason, providing sources is more usually than not possible for an open secret. I have no idea if an open secret is like the open mystery of Ephesians 3:9,10.

Indeed. That seems like a loaded cultural reference point considering the majority of the world (including Christendom) do fine not keeping up with bronze age letters as jargon. Maybe they mean an open secret like the Panama papers?

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#157

Post by tomrod »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #116
ghaff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not even that expensive. I live a town or two further out. One of my neighbors has a small apple tree orchard and the other has a Christmas tree farm. It's pretty accessible to Boston for the day but not really close. My old farmhouse was the original property for about a 75 acre farm. It's been renovated but certainly not a multi-million dollar property. You can actually get out of Boston fairly quickly to…

IMO it's due go higher property taxes, the New England states have some of the highest property taxes and high taxes overall which makes land speculation expensive. CA has extremely low property taxes with a loopholes that push the average even lower Even just a few miles outside NYC, you can get a decent house in NJ for 500K but the property taxes alone will be around 5-10K.

You've just described all those "low cost of housing" homes in Texas. Rundown 30-year old stick homes will run you $400k to $600k and $10k to $15k in property tax.

No state income tax is a lie, it's paid through small home property taxes. Larger land owners invariably go for rural/ag exemptions and reductions.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#158

Post by JackFr »

randomdata wrote: post #60
btilly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic value from operating it will generally not match the opportunity cost of not doing other things. And those operating it will learn the cost of this the hard way when they fail to have access to the niceties of modern society that require exchanging what you've produced for something produced by others. Like, say, the computing device that you used to post your opinion.

> The economic value from operating it will generally not match the opportunity cost of not doing other things. Trouble is finding a better opportunity. From personal experience, my small acreage and old equipment, on average, nets me half of my developer income for just a couple of weeks per year of work. That's really hard to compete with. What else are you going to do instead? It doesn't scale in the sense that if…

A friend who was an agricultural banker and financial advisor, who would regularly suggest to farmer customers that they could truly be better served financially by taking all the equity out of their farms, put it into an index fund and go to work at WalMart, or better still the post office.

But not all decisions are purely financial.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#159

Post by tomrod »

Akronymus wrote: post #142
koheripbal wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment has a very biased tone and lacks an understanding of basic economics

Could you elaborate on how it is wrong?

First, a typo "jn" for in.

Second, the Federal Reserve is not a cabal, let alone a shadowy one.

Third, it's existence is to ameliorate recessions. Your great-great grandparents, if in the US at the time, were very much in favor of it.

Fourth, the US doesn't allow for sovereign banks, so a private Federal Reserve is already the classical liberal/libertarian solution (anarcho-capitalists are typically the ones calling for abolishing the Federal Reserve/returning to commodity as a standard).

Fifth, a lender of last resort is a fantastic backstop allowing more investment and risk taking, which has pushed the US' investment dominance for over a century.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#160

Post by JackFr »

kasey_junk wrote: post #26
msla wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death of the small town seems like it was fore-ordained by simple economics. In big cities, you can afford to have businesses like restaurants that aren't Sysco retail outlets, movie theaters that show more than the five most popular films on Earth at the moment, libraries that have books beyond romance novels, bestsellers, and out-of-date nonfiction. Moreover, cities are the economic drivers, even in the agricul…

Again, I have no business commenting on this as I have no idea what I’m talking about. But it’s striking driving through WI and MI vs IN, IL and IA. In the former, where the agriculture is dominated by less commodity agriculture (dairy & fruit) small towns exist and thrive. In the latter dominated by the most commoditized crops in the world (feed corn & soy) they don’t.

You can store grain 10 years. You cannot store milk or fruit (even with the best inert gas refrigeration) more than a year at most without noticeable degradation.

That has significant implications.

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