Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

Bass would like your opinion on this

Know 1 or 2 at it, expanded infrastructure at home to winter stock but move cows out in spring, best thing they did, generating money to give options by end of lease. Depending on location could be a viable option

The hardest part is getting someone to do the work. Dont think we'll be doing any building here for a long long time ever again

Thanks a mill Jack, great feedback. I'll press ahead.

Good suggestion!

If a young farmer had stock and machinery in hand, they could hit the ground running. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was putting personal money into farming.

It’s quite doable here. There’s a 331ha mixed tillage and dairy farm for sale in the next parish and if you’d the stock and machinery in hand, the capital cost would be easily financed by banks.

Agree.

Grant or no grant any agri buildings are essentially a liability. While dairying is fashionable the buildings carry some residual value, but when/if it falls in popularity, most buildings could be pretty much worthless. Saying that the pig/poultry buildings are worthless because they’re almost impossible to repurpose.

We're still working on the assumption that bigger is better and biggest is best. Cross bred stack them up higher and don't be worried about pesky rules and rules changes. Now on a slightly more serious note. There is a point where renting a turnkey farm is a good idea but I believe that that cost point has been passed a couple of years ago. I think you're just going to make an old man of yourself for someone else's gain. Cos that big payday is just around the corner ......Next year . Next year will be better. I'm hearing that one for a long time now

I've bought and have rented ground, when the whole thing is divided across all acres farmed the land cost is more than what the rent is per acre. The repayments on purchased ground if it went to rent a farm would rent 3 times the area bought. Nothing is black and white you have to do what suits yourself and the farm.

There is no business imo, standing on its own two feet and supplying a full-time income, can stand still. Farming or otherwise. Be that growing to maintain itself, match income to inflation over a lifetime or indeed for the next generation. Not everyone starts off with a couple hundred acres, some of us have had to grow in order to do whats required to stay in business

Anybody that wants to grow in the farming business the best policy is a mixture of renting and purchasing. Renting allows the business to get to a scale where it is then possible to justify buying land. The day you buy land always seem over priced but then 10 years down the road it will seem like good value. The thing with renting is it is a direct cost to the business so it must stack up financially. Whereas purchasing is an investment decision and you are hoping for capital apprecation. In my experiance land has always outperformed money in the bank. We would have bought and sold various amounts of land over the years to get where we are today and although at times it can be testing to meet payments the overall net worth position is always improving.

What's the story now if you're going to a bank for money to let's say build more slurry storage and they wont lend to you as you're in derogation?

B of I are running figures at 220 going forward.

Bigger threat to them is if you are doing development and you dont have enough storage built into your plan.

Exactly plenty of old empty round roof sheds around the country pay a neigbor a few quid to have use of it for ‘bedded storage for cattle’ for the next two years to bridge the gap until people see the lie of the land more than likely derogation is going to be gone so most probably have more than enough storage for at 170 when the time comes already.

Would it not ho to 200 first....

Aib did ask me this time last year when i was looking for my loan what way i was stocked and if I was in derogation.