What's Farmland Worth? What's A Trademark Worth?/ The Answer Is The Same--Tell Me What You're Gonna Do With It, And I'll Tell You What I Think It Could Be Worth?

As I said, in a blog post last week, I am unabashed,dyed in the wool, and enthusiastic capitalist. As such, generally speaking, I think assets, be they real estate like farmland or intellectual property assets like trademarks, are to paraphrase Martha Stewart, "a good thing."

I am because of what I've done related to publishing and farming ( I know, don't seem to have much in common) occasionally asked how much I think farmland or trademarks are really worth.

Despite how different of asset classes they are, my answer is the same: "Tell me what you're going to do with it and I will tell you what I think it's worth."

I am a student of history and history teaches me this is often so. For example, in the early 1900s, the great Nabisco food company was launched as the first really big new national food company. It's CEO, Adolphus Green, realized he needed two things a sanitary clean looking cracker in nice packaging and a big national brand.  He got both. He hired the best agency he could find in New York, and they and he came up with the UNEEDA brand. Then, he spent a great deal of money and time launching it as a national brand. He succeeded beyond even  what a Beyonce's wildest dreams for brand success might be.

When he was done, UNEEDA was the best known brand in America in its day, and estimates reported in Out of the Cracker Barrel were it was "worth at least a million dollars a letter." Now, Beyonce's probably worth more but she's a lot better media to work with than Green did in 1900.

So, if you're going to do something like what Mr. Green did with a trademark then, it's worth a lot, just like if you're going to use farmland to produce a branded retail food product that sells for a premium, in a business with healthy margins that has formidable barriers to competition and an exquisite local presence, then I would say that farmland's worth a lot too.

So, what are you going to do with your farmland?