land rents to look out for david s hovda 03/26/2012 @ 12:15pm This land rental market is not all that you read in the paper or magazines. I had a renter for 9 years that took my 6.8 organic matter soils conditioned with the manure from my livestock enterprise and all the alfalfa and crop residue and bled it to a 1.9 in less than 9 years. you know what that will cost me to bring that up to a 6.8 again at todays fertilizer prices. these sugar beets will destroy your lands productive soils. and it will put nothing back. get a good land management team and they will police your renters to put back what they take out , in fertility of the land PERIOD. !!! Gene Johnstones article on the cattle delema. Cattle and beef prices have gotten too high for the average consumer of 2012. If the average teacher was making $ 140,000 yes he could afford beef on his table and $4.00 gas for his bomb. but he is making just 35 to 4o thousand and cannot afford the price of ten dollar beefsteak. I recall back in the early 80s, I had a dear friend from norway who was a doctor from bergen on a heart convention. I took him out to eat at a local restraaunt in Maynard . he ordered a 10 ounze top serloin corn fed beef steak ,potatoe ,salad the whole works ; the bill came to $6.85 cents american money. He said you americans have gone to heaven over hear. Now I think they have gone to heaven and we have gone to purgatory. And Gene you forget the Hilary Clinton dairy bonanza days of 1980 dairy buyout program that dropped the cattle market limit down for 12 days in a row , insider political propaganda and BS.locked limit down for a $200.00 dollar a head loss ., at the %17.5 intrest days of the 80s . We are still paying off those bank loans with after tax income . the IRS will not let you deduct farming loses of more than three thousand dollars a year of the 80s. Every family farmer cattle feeder went broke and never returned. Happy retirnment. succor.