The economics of autosteer

tillboy

Member
Wow now we have pictures from case boy about how good he is.

I would love to see him spend 14 hours a day on a big challenger with an 8 metre drill running at 15 kph plus and driving "spot on" all the time.
In fact I would take a £50 per tramline deduction from wages that didn't measure exactly right
 

Store Man

New Member
Location
Nottinghamshire
What else could you buy to payback in 2 to 3 years?

I did a bit of work using the information in the forum and conversations on farms and came up with the following as a rule of thumb (anyone who sells the other systems apologies if numbers are way out please post and I will correct!)

ROIComparison3.png


Lots of assumptions in here, and added longer term investments as a comparison, but I am sure there are other short term (1-5 yr) payback investments available?
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
I would say an autosteer system has a life of more like 10 years ? Plus it has residual value

I just sold a JD iTC reciever we used for 5 years for about 25% of what we paid for it and a sf3000 for almost what we paid a while ago

The topcon system in our Bateman is 5 year sold and see no reason why it wouldnt do another 5 at least ?
 
I would say an autosteer system has a life of more like 10 years ? Plus it has residual value

I just sold a JD iTC reciever we used for 5 years for about 25% of what we paid for it and a sf3000 for almost what we paid a while ago

The topcon system in our Bateman is 5 year sold and see no reason why it wouldnt do another 5 at least ?

Clive, have you got a fully plumbed in steering system in the Bateman or have you got an AES wheel thingy?
 

Stoxs

Member
even more so if your trying to throw fert 36/48m with a twin disc machine, which makes me think a well set up 12m machine would give a more accurate coverage over the field surely?

Maybe im not as daft as you lot seem to think i am!!!

we added up how much ground was under tramlines when we used to make 12mtr tramlines but were on 24mtr spraying. basically the 6mtr drill had 1 coulter blocked off on oneside to mke a tramline every turn.
cant remember eaxctlly but over 1000 acers it was something like 12 acers of undrilled ground in unessecary tramlines, this worked out that the auto tramline kit would be paid for in 2 years!! we were amazed , boss soon bought the tramline kit!!!
 

JCfarmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
warks
Mzuri drills must waste a hell of an area!!!:cautious: Same seed rate though so must be ok but you use last years tramlines and drill slightly across them but its dd is cheaper, but but but but we are dealing with Nature too, what to do eh? I moved from 20m to 24m tramlines worked out that we would have an extra 4acres growing area.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Mzuri drills must waste a hell of an area!!!:cautious: Same seed rate though so must be ok but you use last years tramlines and drill slightly across them but its dd is cheaper, but but but but we are dealing with Nature too, what to do eh? I moved from 20m to 24m tramlines worked out that we would have an extra 4acres growing area.

Don't forget that the extra tramlines also get no return on the fertiliser & sprays blanket applied to the field.

I run 650mm tyres on my tractor pulling the sprayer on 30m tramlines = 1.3m out of 29.95m allowing for 1cm overlap on each 6m drill pass with autosteer. Theoretically that's 4% of the land under tramlines & not growing anything. On 24m tramlines with the same tyres & overlap that would be 5%. At 12m tramlines that's 11%. Of course at 12m I would have narrower tyres. The % figure will be higher for headlands & turn ins etc. but in winter osr the % should be lower as the crop fills in the gaps, depending on how much crop loss you have from the pre harvest desiccation pass.

If you block off coulters in Accord/Fenix type pneumatic distributors that don't return the tramline seed to the tank, surely the seed rate on the rest of the drill is higher therefore not wasted?
 

Derksen Farms

New Member
We run a family farm and we currently have a Trimble autosteer and a Trimble guidance system. The autosteer is a CFX-750 display and a ez-steer wheel. This system costs about $8000 cad. The autosteer system doesn’t really save to much money it is more for ease of use. My father originally bought the system so he could eat his sandwich. But if you run yield mapping and nitrogen mapping it may pay off eventually. But Topcon may not pay off because I beleive Topcon autosteer and yield mapping system cost roughly $50’000. And they figure you can save about $5000 (with 1 ft accuracy)a year on 3300 acres when I last checked. And that is 10 years to pay it off.(without including gps subscriptions which are about $500-2000/y). So unless you have a huge farm it won’t really pay off. But if you run a small farm like us you probably shouldn’t spend more than $15000. But that’s just my opinion.
 

Derksen Farms

New Member
What happened? GPS/Autosteer was supposed to get cheaper... Has it got any cheaper the last 5 years?
Well as far as I have noticed we got our system about 4 years ago. And now the same system costs just about the same amount maybe even more. But outback systems are just about the same price as a Trimble but all of the outback systems come with integrated steering which is a plus. But most autosteer haven’t gotten sygnifigantly cheaper only more advanced.
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
Well as far as I have noticed we got our system about 4 years ago. And now the same system costs just about the same amount maybe even more. But outback systems are just about the same price as a Trimble but all of the outback systems come with integrated steering which is a plus. But most autosteer haven’t gotten sygnifigantly cheaper only more advanced.

I think this is the way of the world. Prices never come down...manufacturers just keep adding features on for the same price point and discontinue older less advanced models.
 

Farma Parma

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Northumberlandia
As a GPS Guidance relative newbie & convert to some of the benefits of using this tech,
i recon in one 29ac field today it easily saved me half an hour if not more time Cultivating
it with a Simba Unipress, only overlapping v slightly & then doing it in blocks to save on tight turns
as i previously use the same machine before this.
figured out how to do this with some success anyways but couldnt get it to play ball drilling later.
just a minor Operator not really knowing what iam doing more to blame than anything else.
Back to OP tho will it save me money?
it saved me time & diesel today anyways
And as for the priceless straight DD press marks left in the field, well iam speechless.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.2%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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