I need advice on how to prepare to buy a farm when i get older?

im 16 and i live in Alabama n i wanna buy a farm when i turn 18 or 19 n im really smart any tips on what kind of farm or how to pay for it or anything like that would be greatly appreciatedI need advice on how to prepare to buy a farm when i get older?
Marry a farmers son.I need advice on how to prepare to buy a farm when i get older?
Lets see you will have to spend at least $100K for a small farm under 10 acres that may or may not have usable barns and a house. So you will need to save up your money for a huge downpayment (like 50%) as few mortgage companies will see you as a good risk due to your age and lack of credit at age 18/19. You will also need co-signers to secure a loan. Once you have a mortgage you will have to generate enough income each month to pay it or you will lose the farm to the bank in foreclosure. You also will need thousands of dollars for equipment such as tractors, grain bins, seed, livestock, fencing, feed, fertilizer, etc..





You will need to figure out what kind of farming you want to do. I strongly suggest you work on many different kinds of farms. this will give you skills you will need and a good dose of reality. You might find you really don't like working year round in all sorts of weather doing often physically demanding work with very long hours and very low pay. than again you may find you really do love it.





You will need to gain managerial skills before you own and run a farm as well as marketing skills (your crops/animals will not sell themselves). You have to decide if you want to do your own marketing (pays better but takes 50% of your time) or wholesaling (pays less but you spend less than 10% of your time marketing).





Most people your age who grow up on the farm and have worked with their parents all their lives are not ready to run a farm and they have much more exp than you probably do so I will stress again, get farm work before seriously attempting to buy a farm
start saving up now


harvesting equipment (if your looking into row crops) can cost a LOT- like a cotton picker or a combine is at least a quarter of a million dollars, some are even up closer to a million





to be successful, you need a LOT of land, some farmers where i'm from (South Georgia) are having tough times because of the size of their farms because the smaller the farm, the smaller of a profit you'll make





manage your money VERY well





crops you can grow depend on where your farm at depend on what state you plan to have your farm in


on picking what kind of farm- look at the prices (it would take too long to name ALL the crops you can grow and/or livestock you can raise) but here in South Georgia, it'd be smarter to have a soybean farm because the price for soybeans is 'better' than that for cotton. also, chemical (again if your looking into row crops) will get expensive, then there's type of seed you can buy, some are Round-Up Ready, which means, they are less susceptible to certain diseases, but then with row crops there's 2 main types of weed control- plowing (which you plow the weeds down) and no-till (where you use chemical to control the weeds). with no-till, after a good few years, the weeds will become Round-Up Ready, meaning that if you use Round-Up, it won't kill them like it used to, so you'll end up spending more on chemical to kill the weeds





and, price for diesel (which will be for the tractors and harvesting equipment or the farm truck), chemicals you'll use, and seed all is based on the economy





certain farmers who grow certain crops may get a subsidy payment from the government too, there's also loans you can get to start up a farm too





another thing you need to look into is the equipment you'll need- tractors, harvesting equipment, spraying equipment (you can use a tractor with boons on it or a high-boy or a crop duster) a tractor with boons will take longer to spray the farm, a high-boy is quicker, but a crop duster is the quickest, but you have to pay a pilot to spray for you





also, look into soil fertility- what's the PH, acidity, etc...


here's an example- if you grow cotton for a few years, it will take a certain nutrients out of the soil, and after time the cotton wont produce as much, so you need to plant another crop, like peanuts to replenish the nutrient





and certain pests bother certain crops more so than others, on land and in the soil too, like with cotton in South Georgia, a big pest is the stink bug, boll weivel, white flys, and nematodes (in the soil) and each pest has a different chemical that is used to control them





one other thing you need to look into is equipment up-keep and land isn't cheap either.. you need at least a million dollars to start off good, but the main thing is to have good credit and not to go into debt





and there's a LOT more to learn to, but you learn as you go
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First get a marketing / sales degree in college.


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Whatever you do stay out of debt. Lease land to start out with and start very small and stay out of debt. Get a good job in town to support you and your farm and stay out of debt.





Did I mention stay of of debt?
In addition to staying out of debt, all debt, which is very important, SAVE YOUR MONEY. That's also key. Getting into farming is very expensive, whether you lease land or not.
go ride up in a hillbilly neiborhood and by a farm i think thats how you do it
Buy a farm for what? Investment income. Or a hobby farm that really isn't anything but a play area to pretend you are a farmer or what?





It really makes a big difference.





Most places in the US, there is no way to buy land and pay for it from the farm. What you see is if farmer's buy, they are doing it for a long term investment. Often they make nothing or even pay to farm that land until it is paid off.





So you need significant equity in most places if you are going to buy a whole farm and farm it.





To give you an idea, I know farmers in Idaho who rent land for 1 percent of it's value. That right, their rent pays a one percent rate of return, the rest comes from appreciation, other idiots willing to pay even more, mostly on the assumption that the wave of rich people from California is going to continue to come to Idaho and buy land at any price.





I was just reading that the average for farmland in Idaho this year was $4500. It's really not reasonable to expect to be able to pay that and make anything from corn and soybeans at least this year.





So if you want to buy a farm and farm it, you will have to grow somethng that produces more than the normal income from a smaller acreage. For instance you might be able to buy land and grow fruits and vegetables or you might buy land and put in a livestock facility or something, but you aren't going to be able to buy all your land and grow field crops and make anything. If you could, all those other farmers are right there to take advantage of that. And as a beginner, you have to compete against an experienced person, who is often much more financially established than you are.





You can get typical budgets for many crops in your area from the Cooperative Extension Agent in the county. You can also probably get from him something on what land is renting or selling for. And from that budget you will also see that you will need machinery and so on. You work through those and what you find is a beginning farmer really can't tie up his capital in land and make it work in most cases.





If you are starting from scratch, you might be better to go into a well paid profession, but a small piece of land and feed it until you have most of it paid off and add another, with luck and hard work, you could have a pretty decent base in 30 years or so.





Marv