Why Can’t Farmers be Rich?

by | Oct 2, 2014 | 1 comment

If you are following me on FaceBook you have seen I just shared a post from  the corncrops.com site written by Lindsay Mitchell entitled, “Are Farmers Rich.

She did a great job in a short blog addressing this questions so many people ask. She even states in her blog post that it’s the most searched term on Google. I hope this is because people want to farm but if it’s not that brings me to my topic.

Why can’t farmers be rich?

For starters, I did not come to this way of thinking on my own. I was talking to my brother one day about how mad I was that people think farmers are rich yet these same people work a 40-hour week job and have weekends off.  My brother’s comment was, ” I just tell them, of course, I am making money. Why wouldn’t I? You go to work every day to earn a paycheck.”

What a correct statement, why shouldn’t they make money and why shouldn’t they make a lot of it? Society has this stigma from years ago that farmers should work hard and be poor. If you want to make lots of money you go to “town” and get a “real” job. Farming is no longer run the way it was 60 years ago, not even the way it was 20 years ago. It is a business and it is a big business. When people own big businesses they make money and we look at them as icons in our community or country.

What is stopping us from looking at farmers in the same way? OLD thinking that needs to be changed.

Every farmer I know runs their farm as a business with everyone’s hand in their pockets. The elevator is discounting grain because they say it’s not the quality they want, the banker is taking the interest, the sale barn is discounting cattle that are the wrong color, the fertilizer guy wants his fair share, and the list goes on and on. The time has come to remove some of those hands and be rich!

If you are a farmer, know a farmer or want to be a farmer I want you to be rich. I want you to be successful because I want to eat and give my kids the opportunity to see where their food comes from and the quality of life you can have living outside the city limits.

The Farming Without the Bank was written with this goal in mind. You will see it’s release in the next couple of weeks and you will see how it can help you be rich because there is nothing wrong with that.

As Lindsay’s article was great, society must change the way they think about farming.

Please share any comments you may have, I would love to hear them.

Take care and make money!

Mary Jo

1 Comment

  1. Scott

    I do not need to be rich, but I would like to make a good living farming. I am a 4th generation and my son is 5th generation. Hard to to buy or pick up any rented ground in our area.

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