Has anybody ever got rich through farming?

[glasshouse]

A big +1 to that ^^^

Apologies for putting this up again (it was on the Wool thread over in Livestock and Forage some time ago), but it never ceases to amaze me and just highlights how important agriculture has been to our economy in history.

This is a page from @Mrs Y B's family wool book for 1797..
View attachment 531962
It takes a bit of deciphering, but the bottom line is that the wool from 419 sheep was sold for £110/7s/3d.
If you type that amount into a Googled money converter on the internet it tells you that it equates to somewhere between £127,000 and £177,000 in today's money.
How times have changed

Wool was in great demand then due to the napoleonic war.
British mervhants sold woollens to the french army too!

 

[yellowbelly]

300 quid per fleece would be a bit of a game-changer
imagine what shearers would charge!!

I imagine it was all done 'in house' as record books listing all the farm workers (of which there were many) have also survived.
I have visions of @Mrs Y B's ancestors standing there as they were clipping and logging each fleece down as it was weighed - as each one was worth so much it was almost akin to stacking gold bars into the sheets and I expect they didn't want the odd one going home in somebody's dinner bag
To be fair, all years weren't as good as that - the price received fluctuates wildly over the years. In 1916 and 1917 it just says "Wool commandeered by Government"
Some things never change.

 

[yellowbelly]

Wool was in great demand then due to the napoleonic war.
British mervhants sold woollens to the french army too!

Yeah, there are tales of boats smuggling wool out of the ports of Lincoln and Boston to the Low Countries and smuggling brandy back in.

 

[neilo]

How did that bloke do who tried to tell everyone to buy milk quota the other year? anyone heard from him?

@12000 litre ?

Last seen Jun 19th 2016. Must of retired on the proceeds.

 

[ThatsSomeSheep]

Okay then, he's got a knighthood, runs a farm which made £8M profit last year, and had over £30M cash in the bank at the end of 2016. But yes, the land is hilly and not worth as much as @Bossfarmer on a £/acre basis

Conclusion 1:

John Campbell has, as per OP question, "got rich through farming."

Conclusion 2:

@Bossfarmer "Call Me Dave" yet again proves he wouldn't know a balance sheet from a bed sheet.

TSS

 

[DrWazzock]

@DrWazzock What is your definition of rich ??

In the context of this thread I suppose "rich" means "making or made a lot of money".

So I was only asking if it was possible to make a lot of money or profit by the activity of farming,

I am not saying that being financially rich makes us happy, or satisfied though it might help.

The way I see it, few have made serious money by run of the mill crop or livestock production, especially following conventional methods.

I am not interested in saying what value of assets means that somebody could be classed as rich, I am more interested in how we increase our wealth rather than how much have to start with.

I think we have lost focus on wealth creation due to reliance on subs and the increase in value of the land, which gives us a false sense of our real productive capability.

 

[glasshouse]

Okay then, he's got a knighthood, runs a farm which made £8M profit last year, and had over £30M cash in the bank at the end of 2016. But yes, the land is hilly and not worth as much as @Bossfarmer on a £/acre basis

Being utterly ruthless helps.

 

[DrWazzock]

A few neighbours made serious money with spuds in 76 but that's the only time I remember a bonanza.

Others have made serious miney through diversification and added value, but the rest of us have just got by really.

I don't see any great profit to be made in bog standard farming. The input costs, and output prices are too much beyond our control and we are squeezed in the middle. We can't do a lot about it, other than making a few tweaks here and there.

 

[Hilly]

A few neighbours made serious money with spuds in 76 but that's the only time I remember a bonanza.

Others have made serious miney through diversification and added value, but the rest of us have just got by really.

I don't see any great profit to be made in bog standard farming. The input costs, and output prices are too much beyond our control and we are squeezed in the middle. We can't do a lot about it, other than making a few tweaks here and there.

Probably the same in every industry, some make a killing some make a a fair bit some struggle and some cant make anything and some make a total erse of it.

 

[8100]

This "HEMP" pays well i hear !!!!!!

 

[glasshouse]

A few neighbours made serious money with spuds in 76 but that's the only time I remember a bonanza.

Others have made serious miney through diversification and added value, but the rest of us have just got by really.

I don't see any great profit to be made in bog standard farming. The input costs, and output prices are too much beyond our control and we are squeezed in the middle. We can't do a lot about it, other than making a few tweaks here and there.

tax was 90% in 76

 

[Tarw Coch]

tax was 90% in 76

And a lot of spuds were sold for cash. A mates dad walked into Shukers with a spud bag full of cash and bought two 590's, he also bought a BMW for cash, I guess they didn't have the money laundering regulations back then.

 

[glasshouse]

Farms always seem to need more and more money, thats why steadings and land get sold off

 

[DrWazzock]

And a lot of spuds were sold for cash. A mates dad walked into Shukers with a spud bag full of cash and bought two 590's, he also bought a BMW for cash, I guess they didn't have the money laundering regulations back then.

I remember a neighbour making a lot of money on the spuds. He showed us his new colour telly which had Ceefax, which was something nobody else had. He started dealing in shares and commodities using Ceefax to follow the prices, and blew most of it. He also bought a camper van and used to hire it out to us spudless neighbours for £50 a week so that we could go on holiday.... to a campsite in the shadow of the slag heaps near near Selby so we weren't too far away if the barley got fit to harvest. Dad would be in a phone box each evening checking that everything was OK back home. Happy days.

 

[Billboy1]

Ok man A has a farm with 5 million and nothing in the bank but what he earns just about keeps him
Man B has a farm worth half a Million and a Million £ in the bank . He is living off is savings. who is rich if any ?

Both

 

[Kiwi Pete]

This "HEMP" pays well i hear !!!!!!
View attachment 532158

A fella not to far from me has a licence and is growing it. Doing pretty well out of it too, just needs to attract a few more tourists to help with stripping it all off, as he hasn't got much mechanisation..
There is money in it, but the moment the word gets out that there's decent money- any picks on what follows?? Every man and their kids are in a line for a hemp growing licence, swamp the little market that exists, drive down the price, and moan like feck that it's not what it used to be

 

[8100]

They have not made up their minds on using it for medical purpose yet here.I would think the day its ready for harvesting there would be nowt to harvest

 

[Kiwi Pete]

They have not made up their minds on using it for medical purpose yet here.I would think the day its ready for harvesting there would be nowt to harvest

Ahhh you mean the electric stuff... I think they are gearing up to allow medical marijuana use here soon..
Even the industrial hemp has a heap of benefits and uses- shame they couldn't breed it with a different shaped leaf to cannabis in some ways- but in terms of the things we try to achieve with agriculture it is a hard plant to beat:
grows in most climates
grows in most soils
doesn't need fed
doesn't need sprayed
grows heaps of biomass, quickly
residues great for the soil, and following crop
versatile fibre
health products from seeds/oils

ticks most of the boxes really- it's really only limited by its attachment to cannabis and the stigma that brings

 

[Old McDonald]

Theres no doubt hes probably in the top 5 most sucessful scottish farmers i dont see why he doesnt buy arable though the hill land could become worthless if subs go

Have you ever thought that some of us do not want arable?

I owned/sharefarmed (mainly sharefarmed) over 2000 acres of arable at one time. Never again. No enjoyment the way there is with watching stock grow, breed, rear, fatten. It is simply a way to attempt to create income. It is easier to do something else to make the same money - and just as soul destroying.

I now farm almost exclusively trees. Totally different to annual arable crops. You can begin to "know" a tree the way you can a ewe or suckler cow. Just the same as a stockman can pick out a few individuals from a big flock/herd, individual trees are remembered. Even easier when they stay in the same place of course!

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Theres no doubt hes probably in the top 5 most sucessful scottish farmers i dont see why he doesnt buy arable though the hill land could become worthless if subs go

If he's managed to get 14000 cheap acres that's fairly indicative that he can spot an opportunity a mile off?
Hypothetically, take the sub away, and even a tenner per acre net is a tidy income on that scale, whereas a tenner per acre over 50 acres only buys your haircuts for a year..
given the option of 14000 hilly acres or 1800 arable, I know which I'd have, the one that keeps making a little bit of profit