What type of land should i buy and how much?

Question

If i want to grow fruit, vegetables, and vineyards, what type of land should i buy and how many acres do i need?

Answer 1

I'm with KB on this one.  It's not HOW much land you own, it's how you take care of it.  Personally, I sit on a 6,500 acre farm and, yes, we do grow lots of crops.  But as far as per-acre average goes, some one with 40 acres could do just as well as us.  If I were you, I would do research on how to prepare and maintain your soil in your area for what you want to grow and start there.  You can always expand when you're ready and have the resources available.

Answer 2

interesting

Answer 3

Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, have lots of orchards,vineyards,and vegetable /grain farms as well as pork / beef / dairy and even goat / sheep production facilities. I admire your pioneering spirit, "GO FOR IT"!!!!! The sky is the limit.

Answer 4

Please see my other answers to you questions. It's not about HOW MUCH and WHERE. It's about YOU learning how to manage your soil, and working with what you have. Someone might say "you need 500 acres to grow an orchard"  or you can ask my neighbor who is doing it on 2 acres. It's about what you have access to and making it work. There is no right answer, you have to learn how to grow things, you have to understand your soil, and your climate. And you are the only one who can understand your financial situation. Again, if you spend all your money on land, then you have nothing left to buy fruit trees with - so read some books and educate yourself before you run out and buy a big chunk of land.

Answer 5

Your best bet is to look around your region, and find where others are growing fruit, vegetables and grapes. That's where you'll want to locate. It's kind of like a Wendy's franchisee looking to locate a new restaurant. They will locate very near existing McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell restaurants, because they know that's the best environment for their business.

Fruits, vegetables and grapes are high value crops, so it follows that the land for such crops is very valuable. It totally depends on your location, but land prices for ground suitable for such crops in my neck of the woods (Michigan) starts at a minimum of $5,000 per acre, and up to $25-30,000 per acre, depending on how much competition there is for development sites.

You probably need about 200 acres to begin a viable operation. You can also look at renting land, or share cropping to get started.

Answer 6

surely to plant fruits trees you must find a place which is cool and the soil must be basic in nature

Answer 7

Some of the most successful areas for growing fruits and vineyards are not very suitable for vegetables. Tree fruits and vineyards can be on stony land that is unfriendly to the plow.

One of the more significant qualifications can be availability of irrigation water if natural rainfall is not going to be adequate. Adequate drainage is of course a necessity.

Some vegetable growing can be on floodplains, and even do very well there. But low lying places can be frost prone, and particularly valleys that drain cold air from higher to lower areas.

Where frost management is a big concern, land that is slightly sloping, to drain off cold air, and which dropps off at the bottom, so that the cold air drops well below the crops sensitive to cold.

Steep slopes are a problem for vegetable growing because we keep most vegetable patches tilled, that is soil exposed to water erosion.

Where we are providing irrigation water, we can grow great crops on shelf lands high up above a river bottom, but we have to be alert to avoid overwetting the shelf, risking collapse.

We have to be alert to risk of applying irrigation water where there is salt down below. Even if we do not damage our own property we can destroy very large areas of land below us, and so be sued for damages.

If you have in mind selling to a local market, you have to find land where there is a market rather than hope that the market will come to you.

Where there is a market, however is close to a city that is likely to grow to take your land into the  city. You will not want to spend a lot of money developing for fruits land that will be sold within the decade for urban use. But  that is exactly where you have to be to have a local market.

The further you are from a city, the more you depend on selling for  shipping, as distinct from a local market, and the more you will need to have larger acreage, because the  margin on shipping agriculture is so much lower.

You might do well on 15 acres close to a city, vegetables only, but need 200 acres to make a farm viable well away from the city market.

For vegetables one should prefer soil that is of near neutral pH if it is available. The same is true for every kind of agriculture other than growing blueberries, azaleas, and cranberries which like acid soil.

When your soil is stony, use trees, vines, shrubs, so that you need not till it. You can then use more steeply sloped land too.

Answer 8

if you want to and have the money invest it for land you  think would be the best.

Answer 9

i think you should buy land with good soil and  about 60 acres