Editor’s Introductory Note: This is part of a multi-part article series on retreats written by a Christian farmer who is praying and searching for a wife. Please prayerfully consider all of the topics that he discusses.
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Economics of Land in the 21st Century
Arable land is no longer free nor available at reduced cost. As you learned in Part 2, over a hundred million acres of land in our country were sold for some sweat, initiative, and a small filing fee during the main Homestead years from the 1860s to the 1930s. Even earlier, land was available for a relatively reasonable price. By 1820, the price of land in the U.S. actually fell from 2 dollars per acre to 1.25 dollars per acre.
Whenever people quote that land sold for $1.25 per acre back then our currency was backed by gold and silver. When adjusting for gold prices, you can consider any 20 dollars in gold dollars to be roughly an ounce (actually it is .9675 troy ounces for a Double Eagle Gold piece) when making quick calculations if someone said something sold for a certain amount in the distant past. In JWR’s novel Patriots, we were reintroduced to this concept where in this speculative fiction where the vast majority of Federal Land would sell at a dollar in silver per acre. Extrapolating this to today you can determine if land is more expensive today than in the past. If you find land today that is worth 10,000 dollars an acre, this land in the past could have sold for a $1.25 in silver. One dollar and 25 cents of Constitutional money would sell for about thirty dollars for common circulated silver coinage as of when this is being written. (November, 2024). Imagine being able to buy good land today for thirty dollars an acre. Sadly, your current “dollars”, like all fiat currencies are worth less and could someday be worthless.Continue reading“Thoughts on Retreats: History and Land – Part 4, by Single Farmer”
