Here’s a roundup of your favorite stories on AgWeb in 2022.
1. Young Farmer Makes History, Uses Video Games and YouTube to Buy $1.8M Land
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.
With one foot in the crop rows and another in gaming, Hilbert, 24, operates two YouTube channels and is just hitting business stride at the helm of a company preparing to release a groundbreaking video game, American Farming, aimed at the heart of Midwest agriculture.
2. Monster Snake Repeat: 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. 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 in early December regarding a Creston, Iowa, farmer who worked full-time as an UPS driver and farmed about 500 acres. He purchased 40- to 50-year-old tractors (eight tractors in 2013, 12 in 2014 and nine in 2015) and placed them with implements at each of his five farms. Using Section 179, the farmer elected to deduct 100% of the cost of these tractors each year of purchase.
Section 179 requires the taxpayer to list each item, which is likely what caused the audit. The IRS assumed the farmer collected tractors and argued they were for personal use, so no depreciation or other costs related to the tractors were allowed. The farmer was able to argue all the tractors were used in the farm operation and thus the expenses were allowed, including Section 179.
This case shows farmers need to maintain good records and not commingle personal and business expenses without appropriate records.
4. Pot of Gold: 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.
“Unbelievable and beyond rare,” he says. “Never dreamed I’d see anything like this pot. No doubt, this corn was someone’s last harvest and they never came back for it.”
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 of $2.195 million. That’s right, there is now a $30,000-per-acre club in Iowa.
A local farmer bought the land, and the runner-up was also a farmer, according to Jim Rothermich of Iowa Appraisal.
The farm has 72.49 tillable acres with the balance in road and ditches. It has a corn base of 38.19 acres with a PLC yield of 172 bu. per acre, and a soybean base of 38.19 acres with a PLC yield of 56 bu. per acre.
6. Fertilizer Prices Just Fell 30% in One Day, Farmers Saw Prices Skyrocket 133% in a Year
A May 27 story reported the June spot price in Tampa, Florida, for ammonia nitrogen fertilizer settled at $1,000 per metric ton, a 30% drop from May’s $1,425 per ton. Southeast Asia and other places are seeing more buyers who are unwilling to pay the record high prices that occurred in April and May, and the cost of ammonia production has declined as European natural gas prices fell in the second quarter, Green Markets analyst Alexis Maxwell told Bloomberg.
A report by the Agricultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University shows higher input prices are having a larger impact on farmers than originally thought. That’s after Texas A&M economists recently found nitrogen prices surged 133% in a year.
7. Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
When Ron Gollobin disappeared into snake hell and descended into the expansive tangle of a veritable cottonmouth nest on a four-month hunt, he undertook the most outrageous summer job ever performed by a teen and unleashed one of the most hair-raising entrepreneurial efforts in pit viper history.
Working alone in remote ponds, 15-year-old Gollobin, with the prayers of a pagan and patience of a stone, caught and milked hundreds of 3’ to 5’ cottonmouths by hand in an effort to obtain venom via a glory-and-riches scheme for the ages.
His cottonmouth account is an absolute jaw-dropper with few parallels — high adventure at its toe-curling best. Welcome to Gollobin’s addicting madness and a tale too insane for fiction: a cottonmouth farmer seeking a venom crop for harvest.
8. China’s Latest Land Purchase Could Pose Major U.S. Security Risk
In early August, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with other members of Congress, set off on a tour of Asia. Pelosi’s office didn’t disclose if Taiwan was a stop on the tour, but her plane did land there. While China raises concerns over American boots on the ground in Asia, the country continues to grow its footprint in the U.S. USDA’s latest data shows China owns more than 191,000 acres of U.S. lands, but that was before a North Dakota land sale this spring.
A Chinese company, Fufeng Group, acquired 300 acres in North Dakota for $2.6 million. According to the company, it intends to establish a milling plant.
Various government officials, including North Dakota’s Governor Doug Burgum, have raised concerns over the sale.
Eric Chutorash, Fufeng Group USA COO, claims the company has no Chinese government ownership and all workers in the plant will be Americans. He says he “cannot imagine” anyone in the facility would partake in espionage.
9. Survival At All Costs: Rancher Escapes Hay Baler Tomb
As fast as silk slides from a pocket, Doug Bichler slipped within inches of eternity. When the North Dakota cattleman was savagely contorted by a hay baler and trapped by the machinery for almost an hour, his survival chances dwindled to the likelihood of snow in summer.
Alone on a farm, with his cell phone beyond his grasp on a tractor tire, and a pain level threatening to reach insufferable levels, Bichler was wedged in a vise of belts and rollers, his voice alternating between unrequited cries for help and pleas to God.
“I reached a point where I had no options left,” he recalls. “Anything. Anything to get out and back to my wife. I decided I’d pull my arm out.”
Five years after Bichler’s survival and escape from the baler, his recovery is a tale of remarkable resilience, punctuated by deep concern for the safety of others: “I feel blessed to still be alive, and now I take the opportunity to tell my story, even if it only helps a single person.”
10. American Truckers Lose a Prince of the Road
Born to chase the white line, Ryan Robb was a trucker’s trucker. On Nov. 29, 2021, when Robb, 33, passed without warning, his long-haul brothers responded in force. They measured, cut, welded, painted and mounted a stout rack on a rig — a casket carriage for a beloved 6’4”, 400 lb. country boy on his last ride.
Why did a team of truckers craft a rack for a fallen comrade and drive him to a final resting spot?
“Ryan Robb was the trucker who did it for the lifestyle, not the check,” says Allen Small, manager of Blackjack Express LLC. “Pride of work. Devotion. Gratitude. He was like someone out of a book, except he was the real deal.”
A gentle giant atop the rumble of a sleek, blue Peterbilt 389, Robb traded the asphalt slab of the interstate for a granite headstone, and his final run was a one-way route to glory.
Do you want to keep reading? Here are four more popular stories from the past year:
Days Ahead of Christmas: Illinois Dairy Farm Family Loses Everything Overnight
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
Who Can Afford These Soaring Farmland Prices?
Unbounded: Government Claims Right of Access and Surveillance on All Private Land
