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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3966 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 19, 2024

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What would you do with three hundred acres of desert?

I'm thinking about buying a lot of land because:

  1. It seems like a good investment. Extremely cheap ($100k) and in an area which might plausibly see good growth.
  2. I eventually want a "homeland" for my family, a place where we don't have to worry so much about land costs or neighbors, and can live close to each other. Ideally there would eventually be a business or two in the area (even if just farms) to support people who don't have remote jobs, but the point is to have a place to retreat to when life gets tough, and maybe a place to move to once you have kids.

I'm not all that wealthy though, so it doesn't make sense to get started with it right away unless I can make the land productive in the meantime.

A few ideas:

  • Rehab center
  • Farm
  • Fish/shrimp farm
  • Solar farm

None exciting enough to pull the trigger, though I'm researching solar farm subsidies and shrimp farm economics just in case.

EDIT: It's this parcel for those who are curious. I'm pretty much for sure not buying land for another few years but it's fun to think about in the meantime (and possibly prepare/plan).

I'll probably do a larger writeup on this at some point, but the dream would be to buy an enormous, fairly productive piece of land such as this one and then pretty much turn it into a colony for my friends and family. Alaska has its own major problems of course, but in the long run I'm trying to make enough money to get myself and those I care about out of the culture war entirely.

I would probably try some harebrained geoengineering scheme to enhance rainfall by renting a plane to seed clouds over the area or create permanent bodies of water by digging canals or planting trees. In some regions near the coast or major rivers this might even have some chance of success. Building some ancient Persian ice houses might be another interesting project, and I could probably come up with a few more if I re-read Dune.

Ideal geoengineeting is willing a mountain into existence to impede clouds, combined with digging vast canals to form inland seas. This is however just idle thought on my part following inane discussions on 'what can we use shitloads of nukes for if not war ', a proper geophysicist may have other ideas to contribute after they cease hyperventilating.

I had a similar reaction to learning about Project Plowshare. Doesn’t seem like they tried creating mountains, sadly.

Is it even remotely feasible to target cloud seeding to a 300-acre plot of land, or economically feasible to seed a large enough area to ensure rainfall on that plot?

I think you'd be a lot better off building a big plastic dome to keep moisture in and trucking in water tanks every so often.

Like, a big 'house' for your 'greens' or something? What could we call this?

You need ambient water vapor for cloud seeding to work to begin with. without that you're just shooting silver in the air. Cloud seeding works in coastal deserts where the lack of mountains lets humid air freely pass without condensing, I don't think inland deserts enjoy similar humidity

Wow, those ice houses are awesome. I think you could genuinely have some good success building one and turning it into an airBnB. Regardless it would be a ton of fun to build.

Building ice is easy, why it's not used already? What about building codes? Small ice houses would require large per unit costs, and large would be potentially illegal. ... I happen to live in a place where avergage yearly temp is +2C and nobody is doing that

Everyone I know who's bought cheap desert property to develop as an off grid compound has ended up abandoning it. If you can find Ian from Forgotten Weapons' old channel you can see how much money and effort he put into building his Arizona desert bunker-house before selling it at (presumably) a heavy loss. The wife might have had some say in that, I'm not sure about the full story.

I was talking to a farmer the other week, saying how jealous I was of people with much better land off in the sticks. She said "yeah, the land's better elsewhere, but we need to live near rich customers who'll pay ridiculous prices for Organic Small Farm produce to be profitable at our scale."
(She's actually profiting by buying things like garlic and potatoes from farmers with better land and no markets, and reselling them at local prices)

In a desert you have neither good land nor good customers.

I went to college in Montana. One of the professors noted that a local baker owned their own farms for quality reasons. At first the farms were operating at a loss, but they preferred the consistency of the wheat that came from vertical integration. As the bread brand grew so did the farm. The farm turned profitable at about 10,000 acres (4000 ha). I would guess most of their competitors were at least 1 order of magnitutde smaller. The college town and climate probably wouldn't support very high-priced organic produce farms (it'd be cheaper to fly in produce from those farms in a warmer state).

Good points. I'm not interested in being off the grid per se, except inasmuch as parcels that are totally off the grid are way more affordable, and the grid will probably come to them eventually. It's more of an economic question than anything--what does it take to make bad land productive without too much up-front capital?

The answer is, I think, that it's not really doable--you need either lots of capital, or to squander valuable human capital developing the site that would be better off elsewhere. But I was hoping for a cool idea I hadn't thought of.

Ranching, farming, and aquaculture are a lot of full time work requiring serious expertise. The key to making money off of wind and solar is to have the company lease use rights to the land from you, not to actually do the job yourself. It’s unclear and not terribly likely that you can make the land pay for itself that way, even if it’s only $100k. I’m skeptical that there’s any economic use for land priced at ~$333/acre. Are you looking at someplace ridiculously deep in the Mojave?

Unless this is prime hunting territory for some reason, you can’t make your money back. And living off grid is very expensive over and above the cost of land.

Ha, it is on the edge of the Mojave. Still cheap enough that I wonder if there's some other thing wrong with the land--maybe a lack of water rights.

What temperature zone is the land? What kinds of things are currently growing there? What's the soil like? What is the water source? All these things matter a lot for what you're able to do with it.

Pecan groves are nice, but take a long time to establish.

I have strong negative feelings about solar and wind farms. Solar farms make the whole area hotter, more glaring, and worse, are placed exactly where the electricity is least needed, and I don't know if they're easy to maintain or not, but wouldn't expect so given the kinds of minerals that go into making them.

The water source is important for a farm or anything aquatic.

Ranching is very common, but also doesn't seem that great a lifestyle, unless you're into that specifically, which it doesn't seem like you are. Desert ranching, especially, seems to be a lot of trying to find the cattle and hoping they don't overgraze the land, lots of driving pickup trucks, hauling stuff around, moving heavy objects. I like this guy https://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Soil-Familys-Regenerative-Agriculture/dp/1603587632 but that isn't desert.

Edit: If you're allowed to build a well, but there isn't one yet, research that first! Someone in my area just said they spent $60,000 on digging a new well when their previous shallow well was depleted.

Does the solar farm actually make things worse than whatever salt flat or scrub was there before? I’m thinking the total energy in has to be the same.

And what’s wrong with wind farms?

(I like scrub desert more than average, so others may feel differently)

For other people, yes, because the glare is significantly increased. I suppose it wouldn't make much of a difference farther from the roads, but it also seems like there would be a significant cost connecting to the grid from farther away. I'm in favor of the solar panels for individual houses, schools, military bases, and so on, and it seems promising for places with long electrical connections that are currently maintained for fairly small neighborhoods. If the plan is for the family settlement to generate solar power and use it for their AC or something, that isn't a problem.

Wind farms are unsightly, visible from extremely far away, and kill a fair number of birds.

It's possible that both ventures are still worth it in some situations, but probably not in the case of an amateur landlord who is wondering about putting a shrimp farm in a desert with uncertain water sources.

kill a fair number of birds.

Note that alternative power generation methods also kill many animals, directly and indirectly. Is there any indicator that number of animals killed is worse for wind power?

Wind farms are unsightly

This one depends on person, I guess

And again, the secret to making money off of wind farms is to have preexisting land that the wind farming company leases from you. It’s pure rental income, not an investment.

Fair enough, it just seems somewhat at cross purposes with the dream of convincing all of your relatives to spend time there in comparison with, say, orchards.

According to this map it's hot semi-arid. The soil quality is pretty bad but I see farms nearby.

A pecan grove sounds really fun but the climate probably doesn't allow it.

Are there large cacti? Mesquite? Creosote? Palm trees? Juniper?

There are people growing North African oasis style gardens in that climate, with citrus, olives, and date palms (best example at https://www.goglobaltoday.com/st-anthonys-greek-orthodox-monastery.html). But that takes a long time, a lot of work, and a good well.

WATER RIGHTS WATER RIGHTS WATER RIGHTS

When buying remote out of state property ALWAYS make sure you confirm the extent of development you are allowed to make on your 'own' land. You can make your own outhouse, pay for a macro cell comms tower, but you cannot live without water.

Shrimp farm in the desert sounds....uh, insane? Covered farms still suffer from evaporative heat loss and shrimp die notoriously easily even in unlimited water scenarios, which you will not have even if water rights are not an issue. Farming also sucks, you need warm bodies and thats a challenge onto itself. Solar farms require good grid connections. Weird outdoor off-grid rehab center might be the best of your current options.

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