Cheaper to buy than grow

The trouble with farming has always been that it is cheaper to buy what we produce from other farmers like us than it is to produce those things ourselves. That’s why industries serving agriculture always seem to do better than farmers themselves. For example, Iowa State University published tables of annual average corn and soybean prices and average annual production costs per bushel of corn and soybeans on Iowa’s farms from 1968 to 2016. What the tables clearly show is that it is cheaper to buy those crops than to grow them. That’s why keeping the kids down on the farm is so hard. Unfortunately, while farmers grew corn in 2016 worth $3.44 per bushel, they spent $4.11 to do it. Soybeans are a similar story, costing $10.67 per bushel to grow while only worth $9.24 at the elevator.