westbranch
Well-known member
Wow! My in-laws farm/own land in NW IA/Sioux county and I just looked up taxes on a few of their parcels and its ~$35/acre. That's for some of the most expensive corn and soybean ground in the US.
How about an Eastern US hunting issue?
- Thread starter seeth07
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Wow! My in-laws farm/own land in NW IA/Sioux county and I just looked up taxes on a few of their parcels and its ~$35/acre. That's for some of the most expensive corn and soybean ground in the US.
Yeah, Nebraska is insane, but we have crumbling roads and failing schools to show for our high taxes. So we have that going for us.
Every time I drive past a tiling operation I try and image how much black smoke would billow into the atmosphere if I poured a can of gas on a single roll and flicked a camel onto it.
seeth07
Well-known member
The environmental harm from that black smoke would be a grain of sand on a beach compared to what that tile going into the ground does to our planet.
CowboyLeroy
Well-known member
Have a look at what I have for neighbors. A ladder stand sitting over a corn feeder, and a cell camera 25 feet off the line.
$100 Per acre taxes are not the case around here. I've got farms in both IN and IL, both good farm ground and pay $20-30 / acre taxes.
Only places I've seen the high tax rates like mentioned are where farmers are still farming parcels of ground on town fringes, in industrial park areas, etc.
Farming is a tough business. They handle a lot of $$, have lots of expensive equipment and generally have very high net worth which is all tied up in ground and equipment, but the actual income produced by all that investment is marginal. So, yes they are pushed to try to pick up an extra dollar off every acre, any way they can.
As an avid midwestern deer hunter, I saw how the habitat was getting wiped out years ago and realized that the only way to assure long term quality hunting was to buy ground and develop it for such. Just so happens, it's been a really good long term investment too, appreciating considerably in value while spitting out a little income each year.
I’m stuck, I mean I farm the ground so I need to maximize profits, but I love hunting and want my kids to be able to enjoy it, so I keep Timber, draws, etc.
But I sit and think especially now when margins are so tight about the 97 acres of timber, creek, grass pockets and swamp out of 320 acres on my home farm that I’m paying taxes on just to hunt. It’s an easy decision for me because I grew up wandering it and hunting it, but if I had no connection to it looking at the bottom line would be much easier. That’s why as much as I hate to see trees cleared, swamps drained, waterways tiled, at the end of the day farmers are just doing what the consumer wants.
I have tried to kind of push my vision of agriculture on others, but the corn/soybean mentality is hard to break
seeth07
Well-known member
Man this hits right at home and you nailed it.
Personal connection to the land and appreciation for habitat as well as probably some expenses that also prohibit you from doing the work to make tillable acreage keeps that habitat going. If a corporate farmer comes in and offers you more than market value for your property and you sell, they have the hired hands and equipment to clear cut, move earth and install tile to make the agricultural land at a way cheaper rate than what you can.
That is what is happening - these corporate farms are businesses looking at bottom lines to make money and whatever it takes. At the end of the year they don't want to huge profit and pay taxes on it to lose a 1/3rd of it so they instead reinvest that into more acreage so their profits go up the next year. Rinse and repeat. They just offer whatever it takes to get the land from the stubborn folks like you and me that don't want to let go but eventually that offer price is high enough.
44hunter45
Well-known member
They are accessing through your place? Put up some signs on the road saying "Hey Bobby, Hey Jimmy, Hey Sammy! I miss those hunky butts of yours. Call me, Trini"
That will solve the GF problem. Include a Madison phone number.
I think we’re going to see a major shakeup in the Ag sector in the next decade. I’m not sure which way it goes yet. While the average consumer is looking at nutrition in a different way. For the last century it’s been produce as much as we can to keep food prices low, no matter what the end result of nutrition is.
So either the big food (ConAgra, Cargil, Nestle, etc) basically controls the narrative and we continue down the path we’re on and they just spin the cheap junk food as “healthier” and farmers basically produce directly for the companies and the markets are nullified.
Or farmers are forced to refit, retool and produce things that people actually want. It’s not the farmers fault, farmers are like beavers. Tell them to produce corn and soybeans. That’s what they’re gonna do and they are great at it, so great that we are overproducing crops we don’t need. So the government is forced to subsidize a crop that isn’t necessary. The downside of this is that a mountain, and I mean a mountain of equity is going to be lost in the value of farmland while the market resets. If people can withstand the pain of that I think we end up in a better place for everyone, but I don’t think in our soft society today anyone is willing to take some short term pain for long term gain unless they have to.
Gellar
Well-known member
The republican caucus of Iowa has a platform to freeze or lower property taxes, especially for ag producers. Sounds good on the surface but how are they going to make up for that loss of revenue? By combining government offices, dumping more responsibility kn local governments, further cutting services, education and Natural Resources.
We’ve been hearing the same thing here. I got ejected from a town hall meeting our state senator put on about 10 years ago when they passed $20 million in property tax relief. He was on a back parting tour and I stood up during the question segment and told him that just on the corn and soybean acres in the state it was less than $0.40 an acre and that would be akin to going to a restaurant to eat, and to show you the gratitude they have for you they flip you a quarter on the way out the door on a $100 bill then tell you “you’re welcome”. That got a lot of laughs but when I asked him if he thought we were all stupid and if we were dumb enough to maybe one day be elected a state senator, that’s when I was asked to leave.
seeth07
Well-known member
I'm going to have to do a lot more research on ag taxes in WI and why they are so low. I thought this was a universal thing - give the farmer cheap property taxes for the ground they work. Apparently not. I know my neighbors cry over their taxes (non ag) while I'm pretty happy. I believe its because being zoned residential is where they collect their taxes based on this comparison of my home property compared to my neighbors:
Mine, no residential zoning - notice how even the "other" for where my house is zoned isn't even a high assessment although it should be
neighbor with residential zoning
Forkyfinder
Well-known member
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Nebraska, in general, has insane property tax. Paying 4k in prop tax on a property worth 200-250k.
JM77
Well-known member
I'd like to hear your 20 acre neighbor's side of this.
Also, I know easements are a legal document that rarely lives and breaths like you say. They are usually recorded with the county clerk and are permanent unless the terms are broken. Did you add terms that shooting too many deer by your standards voids the easement?
Bottom line if they're legal and you don't want to discuss it with them, maybe mind your own business and improve your habitat so the deer want to stay and travel on your place. Life's too short...
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