Henry Ford, whose ancestors were small-parcel, Irish farmers, was quite the landowner. According to Ford R. Bryan, author of Beyond the Model T: The Other Adventures of Henry Ford, Ford’s tally of Mother Earth included 26,000 acres of property in southern Michigan for farm and hydroelectric use; 400,000 acres of timber and iron mining land in Northern Michigan; 75,000 acres of timber and rice land at Richmond Hill, Georgia; 2.5 million acres of Brazilian tropical forest for the production of rubber, plus farmland in Old England, New England, and Florida; numerous coal, dolomite, lead, and railroad properties; and factory sites around the world. The estimate is that he owned more than “3 million acres, the equivalent of 4,700 square miles, or roughly the size of Connecticut.” The saying goes that “Fred Gregory, his buying agent, frequently had to remind Ford, when Ford proposed buying a piece of property, that he already owned it.”
Ford’s agricultural interests - which included experimental farm crops, farm tractors, farm traction engines, grain processing, soybean experimentation, and horticulture - were unique in that he personally managed much of his southeastern Michigan farmland down to the most infinitesimal details. Ford’s losses on his farm entity’s operations were excessive, due to the massive R & D and experimental nature of the work. Losses from these southeastern Michigan farms are said to be over $13 million between 1913-1944. The IRS actually stepped in and limited his allowable loss deductions to a paltry $25,000.
