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Your farming property has the potential to score thousands of dollars for you every year in produced goods: and the value of the property itself can continue to grow as long as you have it, as long as you take care of it. Because of this, you must get to know what types of care add the most value and which might hurt you in the long run.
These are five ways to increase the value of your farm property.
1. Make a Regular Maintenance Schedule
Although maintaining what you have may not be as flashy as building on or buying new land to add to your property: it’s a fantastic way to ensure that your property’s value stays up. Of course, this means you have to work to ensure invasive species don’t make their way onto it, all unneeded brush is cut back, and your property is routinely maintained.
If you have any water features that you use, ensure the levels of pollutants, their pH level, and the species within it. These annual checks will ensure that nothing can build up enough to become a long-term problem and that you have the opportunity to stop anything before it gets too far. This will also give you a good history to work off when you try to sell your land, showing the changes or how steady it’s been for an extended period.
Routine maintenance protects you from surprises and will save you from dealing with a flooded and polluted pond, making you try to figure out how to fix a muddy driveway.
2. Ensure You Have Enough Drainage
Drainage is vital for every part of your property. This could mean drainage within your agricultural buildings, allowing water to get away from important storage or vehicles, or drainage away from the buildings themselves into areas where you can put the water to work.
The best agricultural drainage is surface ditches and subsurface permeable pipes. This moves standing or excess water away from poorly drained lands to areas where you can either use it or into approved rivers or lakes. However, be aware that if your water could contain chemicals from farming or oils from vehicles, you must research the local laws in your area that will tell you where and how to dispose of this water.
3. Improve Current Farm Structures
What structures do you currently have on your farmland? Although it’s common to have at least three, many don’t consider updating any of these properties until it’s too late. It could be a good idea to look into large shed kits and other building ideas that will allow your property to reach its full potential.
When you’ve built these properties, ensure that you set up a schedule to routinely maintain, clean, and ensure they’re in working order. These buildings add value to your property as long as they’re in good shape, so you must allow them to last as well as possible.
Build on flat cleared land with a solid foundation, and treat this with the respect and care that you’d treat a house you were building for profit.
4. Increase Security of Property
Your land’s security matters, not only to stop people from coming and going as they wish: but also to stop animals who may wander in and try to take some of whatever you’re growing.
Part of this security should ensure that your buildings on the property are as secure as possible. This means steel buildings that could handle almost any weather and have locks so the average person can’t break into them.
It would be best if you also looked into fences and other types of equipment that can put people and animals at bay. Cameras can also help when you’re going through this process because they’ll help you notice which part of your property has the biggest issue and where you should put your resources to stop it in the future.
5. Rotate All Crops You Grow
Any farmer knows that there are rarely crops that can survive being put in the same soil forever. So if you want healthy soil that can support whatever crop you’re growing, it’s a good idea to rotate your crops.
Rotating crops means using different crops every season or rotating between the years. This increases your soil’s health, ensures that it stays aerated and moist, and allows you to sell another crop during your main crop’s off-season. This is also a great selling point to buyers considering your property if you want to sell land fast.
Your Farm Property Is Only as Valuable as You Make It
Although it would be fantastic if everyone’s farm property were immediately valuable: unfortunately, the main value is what you put into the land. If you can properly maintain your property and put work into it so that it becomes agricultural land people would be interested in: the value will rise automatically.