Pivot Corners and 5 acre Plots; Value Adding the Unfarmable

Every agricultural operation has some land that they pay taxes on but which remains unutilized. This scenario can arise in various ways, but we have found some creative solutions to generate revenue from these acres. It is entirely possible for those acres not growing a commodity crop to earn revenue that complements your agricultural operation. Possibly even more dollars per acre.

If you fly over the middle portion of America and look out the plane window, there is a high likelihood you will see perfect circles, often nestled together in sets. What you cannot see from the airplane window is that these circles are generated by a pivot irrigation system and are usually placed within a square. This circle within a square results in four corners that are often unutilized in the traditional crop sense. These corners can become a liability, costing money to maintain.

A 5-acre swale in the middle of your quarter section that is always too wet to be planted also creates an issue. While drain tile could be an option, there might be another solution. I had some land on my personal farm that I took out of production for this season and conducted an experiment. The backstory is that the previous owner of this pasture had dug perk holes, which were never filled in. When I gained the lease, I realized what a physical liability these holes were for myself and my cattle. Filling the holes left me with 2.5 acres of dirt that needed to be planted into something as we entered early summer.

Our grass basis here in North Carolina is cool-season perennial grasses, which are typically planted in the fall. Since we were just entering the heat of summer, I decided to plant a combination of sunflowers and browntop millet. Why? Because doves love sunflowers and millet, and folks in North Carolina, including myself, love to hunt doves. The summer annual crops would be dead by the time the cool-season perennial grasses needed to be planted. The real kicker? People like sunflowers and would possibly pay to take photos in them before dove season. Additionally, if grass became scarce during the summer drought, the millet could be grazed.

We do not own any large planting equipment, so I kept the experiment to small, rentable equipment. I also used seed from my local farm supply store. For the 2.5 acres, I used one 50-pound bag of browntop millet, one 50-pound bag of Peredovik sunflowers, and one 50-pound bag of 17-17-17 dry fertilizer. I disked the ground with our small tractor and broadcasted the seed using a broadcast seeder on the back of our four-wheeler. We then lightly disked the top layer of soil to incorporate the seed. While there are more professional ways to plant, we wanted the experiment to remain attainable to anyone.

My investment in the entire dove plot was $610, which included the following: seed ($187), fertilizer ($54), fuel ($69), depreciation ($50), and labor ($250). We had a historically wet summer, and the sunflowers bloomed beautifully. We posted a couple of photos as Field Notes on the field of flowers and waited for the photo sessions to start.

What are the returns on this 2.5-acre plot? Eight photo sessions at $75 each would break even. Renting the field for one dove hunt at $1,000 would yield a 64% return on investment, while renting it for two days would yield a 228% return. If you covered your costs by allowing summer photography, then all the dove hunting would be pure profit.

We personally hunted our small plot five times this year and shot doves on all the hunts.

Now, take this small-scale model and imagine planting all four corners of your pivot into separate plots. It is plausible to rent each corner out to a different group of hunters and really keep the doves flying on opening day. While I understand that this may not scale completely linearly, those returns are still not to be ignored. This is but one of the creative examples I can think of to utilize the unfarmable. 

Note: If you would ever like to evaluate the economics of one of your listings, please reach out at taylor@landtrust.com or 406-709-8450.

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