November Sales Report

[BA Deere]

11/16 Floyd Sale: didn`t attend but heard of "no sales" on some items, reports of alot of bargains.  Here is the complete after sale with prices.

http://auction.gilbertsaleyard.com/AuctionCastBoard/Default.aspx?MATEventID=119795&THEventID=192933&...

Strawberry Point yesterday: Grinder mixers are hot property as are manure spreaders.  A 4455 mfd 4900 hrs $60,000 and his 4255 mfd little brother $55,000 both clean as you find and I thought worth the money.  Disc mowers are cheap $2300 for a 270 John Deere, New Holland that was clean in the $4000 area.  1644 CIH combine $18,000ish looked and sounded good.  A 920 beanhead on a old JD running gear $6500...just a nice deal there.  As always the early 80`s Case xx90 tractors are cheap horsepower.

here is the Strawberry Point sale bill

http://www.everitttractors.com/ 

they ran two rings back to back and you can literally "bid with both hands"  🙂   The thing with sales this time of year, whatever follows you home it gets pretty dark the last 2 hours of the trip  🙂

The model 30 John Deere pull type  combine $2900     I junked alot of them when iron was $200 and thought wonders what getting $400 total for them, guess I didn`t know what I was doing ...$2900 Wow!

[Red Steele]

Kind of Wish I had made it to Floyd for that auction,I could have used that CIH 9330 rowcrop 4x4.....had a 9230 for a decade and loved it and miss it a lot. Great planting, grain cart, and wagon puller. The Brent 644 for $6000 was cheap enough, too.

Big Bob says to brace yourself for three years of sub $4 corn, and I am trying to keep some funds on the shelf for the better bargains sure to come as we deplete our reserves.

[BA Deere]

There are bargains out there Red, and I also think it`ll get cheaper unless inflation bails out the commodity sector.  If I had to bet, "Big Bob" is probably right this time around on the sub-$4 corn. I hate to say it, but if we have a crop similar in size next year, we may have sub-$3 corn, if that occurs even the most well-heeled farms will have zero machinery budget.

The livestock guys still have some money, a rusted out grinder/mixer bringing $3,000, but even if "they still make new one`s" those cost $50,000.  So spending $3,000 and getting the pop rivets and tube of Liquid Nails out makes sense in this volital environment.

During the last hey day years of farming, I didn`t go to sales and there wasn`t many of them.  i found the things that I bought was more resonable on the dealer`s lot.  Now these consignment sales are huge and retiring farmers take their entire line there, instead of having the sale at their place.

[Red Steele]

Well, if you go on Mankato Craigslist right now, you will find 400 acres primeland up for a "new renter", another 400 acres or so in smaller chunks up for sale at $8000 per acre or so, the local realtors have land auctions and listings, the area attorney says that several properties have "no saled" where the owners wanted $8500 and the preferred buyers said "no way".

Maybe its time for Shifty to get Boris and Nutz and some of those other coffee shop drinkers to go to the bank, borrow a few million, and find out how easy it is to make a small fortune in farming right now without any sweetheart  land deals and at "market rates". If they don't want to be the CEO in clean shirts making the fortune, maybe someone else from the coffee shop crowd wants to step up and show how it's done.

Time to keep you powder dry and wait for a better opportunity, me thinks. None of the blind squirrels are apt to find any acorns in this market, and even the sharp eyed varmits are going to have a hard time finding an uncracked nut.

I hope "Big Bob" is as wrong now as he was in one of those 2000 years when corn first hit $3 and he said to sell several years. I listened to him then and it just about did me in. Barely had enough gross to pay for the inputs and lived a spartan life for three years while everyone around was harvesting $5 and $6 corn.

Nice to see fertilizer finally start coming down, though. Just priced Urea at $100/ton less than last year.

[BA Deere]

Land is a "bubble" however it isn`t a typical bubble...there`s farmers involved    Farmers are supernatural in the things that we can somehow "make work".  The land bubble has enough wanting it to stay afloat so they artifically blow on it to keep it going.  And that`s understandable, a retired guy that has a nice section and sees similar sales of $14,000/acre, he gets to thinking he`s in the catbird seat and anything different, he doesn`t want to hear.   And I hope land doesn`t crash, because I would probably have to scramble myself and buying "bargain farms" would be the last thing on my mind.

The world economy has slowed, the Baltic Dry Index is I think, record lows. The last card the fed has is to inflate, although you`d never know it to listen to their rhetoric.  When inflation occurs it`s off to the races, but who knows how long they can keep the current kabuki dance, it could be years and those trying to hedge for it will get chopped up.

[OKdon]

You have just lived throught the most prosperous decade in american farming and now you fret about how bad you have it and your bank hasn't even called your loans.

You didn't have one ounce of sympathy for those that took the brunt of the 80's crisis and now you whine about a little financial discomfort. Blame it on Obama or anyone else except yourself. Yes you too can buy land for what it's worth. It's worth what somebody will pay for it. You could have piled up ton's of cash the last few years but you had this craving for new machinery and high living.

Reckless spending that you thought was criminal during the 80's. If your lucky land prices will continue to decline but you won't have to worry about those pesky estate taxes. Yep life is gonna be perfect for you! Look at the positive side BA. 

[BA Deere]

Don, I am looking on the positive side, reality dictates that the cure for high prices is high prices and vice versa.  That $7 corn funded alot of increased productivty, tile, irrigation, improved fertility, more timeliness in taking care of the crop.  $7 corn made it possible to look to the west in Wall Drug`s parking lot and seeing the Badlands and looking to the east and seeing corn with 150 bu yield potential.  You didn`t see that a couple decades ago.

It isn`t that farmers won`t always want to farm more than twice what they currently farm and buy all the land that they possibly can.  It`s that if grain prices stay low with huge carryovers for years, eventually the bloom will come off the rose on land prices.  Eventually things turn around, but just buying high, figuring "it somehow will work out...it always has" , you have to survive and get from the start line to the finish line without going broke.  And yes, some people have been lucky, like a guy successfully driving his pickup across a frozen lake and the next guy falling through the ice just by walking.

If corn drops to $2 and i don`t know why it can`t, sure you`ll hear a case of the farm selling for $20,000 here and there, but there will be a story behind it not rooted in economics.

I don`t blame Obama for $3 corn, just like I didn`t give him credit for the $8 corn that I sold.  It`s economics, I rode the surf when the waves were good, now theres a rip current and too choppy to be anywhere else than on the beach working on my tan and picking up a good deal when I see it.  I`m just thankful that I didn`t get too exuberant when the times were good.

You know the old saying "♪Buy low ♫  Sell high ♪"   

[OKdon]

I woud only add to your last sentence. Buy low sell high but not necessarily in that order.

[Milligan Hay - Iowa d:^)]

I'm looking to recruit as many farmers as school bus drivers in the next few years. I'm the driver trainer and we need as many as we can get.  Most districts are paying $17 - $20 an hour plus sign on bonuses. If you stick around long enough to collect IPERS , that's a plus, too. 

[OKdon]

That's right but you are one of those worthless government workers! Right?