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![]() Jan. 3, 2023 Here are the five most read items which ran on AgWeb.com in 2022 as reported by Farm Journal: #1. Young Farmer Makes History, Uses Video Games and YouTube to Buy $1.8M Farm Who buys farmland for $1.8 million with video game money? At 15 years young, Grant Hilbert started a YouTube farm gaming channel in his bedroom, grinded for seven years to gain 1.3 million followers, bought 250 acres of Iowa black dirt and made history as the first person to break into farming via video games. Hilbert's story is a stunner. He is not a traditional gamer, nor a social media influencer, but simply a corn and soybean farmer with vision-several steps ahead of a rollicking online marketplace where a ravenous public feeds its fascination for all things farming. U.S. agriculture, he believes, is in the beginning stages of a paradigm shift of access: "If I was able to do it, then any kid with drive should be able to do it." #2. Weeks Apart, Farmer Kills Two 6'-plus Timber Rattlers Every farming season is laced with a litany of hazards, but leviathan-sized timber rattlers are not typically on the list. Across decades walking cropland and woods, Jim Bowen has crossed paths with countless venomous snakes and carries a scar from a cottonmouth bite as his price of admission to the great outdoors. However, during the summer of 2021, Bowen encountered two of the largest timber rattlers of his entire life-6'-plus heavyweights adorned in jagged, black chevron patterns painted against light gray scales. He hopes to never again confront creatures possessing such girth: "I've seen a lot of things outside in my life, but I don't ever want to see another snake that big. I don't believe I could handle anything bigger." #3. Tax Court Rules Farmer Can Use Old Tractors The Tax Court issued a ruling on Dec. 5 regarding a part-time farmer near Creston, Iowa. The farmer worked full-time as an UPS driver and farmed about 500 acres in the off hours. He experienced a heart attack in 2011 that perhaps led to the IRS issue. Instead of buying new tractors, the farmer elected to purchase 40- to 50-year-old tractors and place them with implements attached at each of his five farms. This allowed the farmer to eliminate the time and effort of moving tractors from field-to-field and maintenance could be done by the farmer directly. The farmer had elected to deduct 100% of the cost of these tractors each year of purchase by using Section 179. #4. Rancher's Stunning Indian Artifact Find Brings Past Alive When a curious rancher stumbled into a forgotten cave in search of straying cows, he discovered one of the most incredible Native American artifacts on record. Hidden beneath a rocky overhang and forgotten for a millennium, a 10"-tall clay pot was found with its sealed lid intact, protecting a golden treasure within: almost 5 lb. of phenomenally well-preserved corn harvested 1,000 years in the past. The story of the pot's stunning find, outrageously unlikely survival, and implications for modern agricultural research is stitched together by ranch owner Steve Campbell, an authority on Native American stone tools who has scoured fields and walked rivers since childhood, and amassed a museum-worthy collection of 10,000-plus items. #5. $30,000 Per Acre? Yep, The Details on the Latest Record-Breaking Farmland Sale Not to sound like a broken record, but we have another record for farmland sales. In Sioux County, Iowa, 73.19 acres of high-quality farmland sold for $30,000 per acre during an auction on Nov. 11. That equals a total sale cost of $2.195 million. That's right, there is now a $30,000-per-acre club in Iowa. A local farmer was the buyer, and the runner-up was also a farmer, according to Jim Rothermich of Iowa Appraisal. To read more about the articles click here. Tweet |
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