No tractor, no problem: how I’m building my farm cheaply

One of the biggest barriers to entry in the world of farming and gardening is expensive startup costs. That's why I am foraying into the world of farming without fancy machines.

The allure is there: walking outside onto your farmland to rev up a John Deere tractor that saves you from working your body out in the field. I understand why tractors quickly rose to farming prominence once they were introduced at the turn of the 20th century. People had been engaging in back-breaking labor that limited their ability to farm on a large scale.

With tractors came the promise of bigger farms. Bigger farms meant more money. Farmers felt they may actually achieve some level of stability in their craft. The introduction of pesticides and herbicides a decade later, coupled with a trusty tractor, gave farmers the slightest bit of job security. It was a match-made in heaven.

The problem is that the cost of tractors has followed the pace of inflation in this country, which is why the $500 tractor in 1920 is now $50,000 today. And those same herbicides and pesticides are 100x more potent, poisoning our soil, food, and water in just about every county in our country. We have information and knowledge they didn’t have in the 1930s, which is why if we continue to farm in the same way, ignorantly looking past the cancer-causing practices of the farming industry, we’re doing our children and our children’s children an unfathomable disservice.

The farms of the future won’t look like the farms of the past. A decentralization is coming as the average age of the American farmer is now over 60 - their land is going to change hands. It’s one of the biggest wealth transfers of our lifetimes.

How can you get in on the action? Especially if you don’t have $100k laying around in your bank account?

Too many people feel disenfranchised from farming because of the startup costs. I am here to tell you there is another way to go about doing this. And I only know it because I am doing it as we speak.

Yes, I am starting a farm without dropping $50k on expensive farming machinery. I am doing it without buying ANY machinery at all… and you can, too! Here’s how.