As an example of that, our farm bought land in 2005. We bought 1,250 acres, and we paid $950,000 for it--which is a little less per acre than the fruit growers, but...
Our plan, in order to buy that land, was to sell more land and do what they call bridge financing. We financed the whole purchase price, plus Farm Credit wanted to take over our farm mortgage, so we took out a loan for about $1.3 million. We then sold off a 15-acre piece for $125,000 and a 25-acre piece for about $127,000. That was ALR land that we actually worked and took about two to three years to subdivide. It was rough land that we didn't use for our cattle operation. It was divided by roads, and we were able to subdivide those and sell them.
The type of the place that we bought was 1,250 acres, and we sold a 60-acre home site off there for about $330,000. Then we sold a 200-acre block at the back for about $425,000.
In essence, we almost paid for that, our remaining 850 acres, with land that we sold. The hard part is that because there is so little income in agriculture, we might have to go one more lot, and if we have to go that lot, it will take away the value of that.
There's money to be made in buying, selling, and chopping pieces of property, but it doesn't change the fact that there's no money in the agriculture itself.