What is the best way to start a farm or ranch career?
Asked by chance77
I want a creer in farming and ranching> What is the easiest way to get loans with poor credit. Also what is the best market in crops and live stock to sell right now?

Best Answer:
I'm assuming you know what your getting into - lots of hard work, few vacations - especially if it's a dairy farm, etc. If you've never done that kind of work before, go and talk to farmers or ranchers, get a sense from them on how to best get started. Talk to a Cooperative Extension Service agent, attend conservation district meetings - put yourself in the right place to talk to the right people. Then, when you have a clear picture of how you think you can get started, develop a business plan - written out. If you have land already, then getting loans with land as collatoral may be an approach. Otherwise, you'll have to borrow unsecured - meaning higher interest rates. You might check with a local USDA farm service center office, and talk to a manager there to see what programs USDA may have for first time farmers. Another idea, although more time consuming, is to go and work for a farmer or rancher - and work hard and ask for more responsibility as time goes on. With hard work, you may get to point where you know enough about the operation to buy your employer out. Those are just a smattering of ideas.
I used to work for USDA 20+ yrs ago in a rural field office - not sure what programs they have now that might benefit you.
Answered by wwtuman

If you have never farmed before go work for someone else for several years before investing in a farm of your own. You may well find out you do not like long hours (20 hours a day is not unknown), brutally hard work in all conditions, and low pay. Also farming is highly skilled and most skills you can only learn well with hands on experience. if you have poor credit that tells me you carry a lot of unnecessary debt-such debt is a killer for a farm as you will not make much, if any profit your first 5 or so years and if you go into this enterprise with debt other than loans for the farm itself you won't last more than a couple of years before your farm will be in foreclosure. less time if you have any failures (which is likely the first few years). That said, FSA has a really nice deal for new farmer loans. they will do up to 40% of a farm loan at 1.5% int. on a 20 year mortgage (the other 60% of the loan has to come from Farm Credit Services who will charge around 7% interest and give you a 30 year mortgage)
Answered by Ohiorganic