Contract farming agrements for 2020 season

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Not yet, but yes! A crop of spring wheat at 2.5 t/ac instead of a 3.5 t/ac winter wheat is never going to have the same gross margin even with lower production costs. By the time you've had to rework the land in spring 2020 & then have a late 2020 harvest it has compromised 2021's crop too. Been ok for osr establishment this autumn though & lots of black grass has been knocked out, so not all bad unless you buggered up your soils a year ago.
 

farmerfred86

Member
BASIS
Location
Suffolk
Despite the difficult weather its mostly sugar beet and the following cereal thats letting the side down. (beet was consistently our best GM until recently) Winter beans were a total disaster but very unusual.
Both crops do not disappear following one bad year though. CFA results will certainly be down.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Thats when contract farming agreements get interesting. Who will carry the loss?

That depends on the structure of the agreement. The contractor normally gets paid first e.g. £80-100/acre despite costs of £140. Then the farmer gets their charge of about the same. Then split the rest between them. The contractor has the first loss but it is limited.
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Thats when contract farming agreements get interesting. Who will carry the loss?

On a fallow? Depends on the agreement. Typically there is an agreement that "planned" fallow will be avoided. Unplanned fallow is likely to drop out of the agreed arable area - so "farmer" will get bps minus any ad hoc costs, which I expect will be a fair bit less than the "farmers charge" (definitely not rent). Contractor will end up with staff and gear to pay for with no crop.

"Farmer" stands the risk for a bad crop, of which this year there were many. 0.5t osr crops etc the full paper loss is faced by the farmer. Contractor still gets paid.
 

glasshouse

Member
Location
lothians
Not yet, but yes! A crop of spring wheat at 2.5 t/ac instead of a 3.5 t/ac winter wheat is never going to have the same gross margin even with lower production costs. By the time you've had to rework the land in spring 2020 & then have a late 2020 harvest it has compromised 2021's crop too. Been ok for osr establishment this autumn though & lots of black grass has been knocked out, so not all bad unless you buggered up your soils a year ago.
2.5t of sp wheat @£200 will pay rather better than 3.5 @£140
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Should be okay On the whole. Our worse performing farm won’t have much divvy if any, difficult farm but we are working on it. One farm will be rolling in it with 3/4 of the area in 6.8t/ha spring milling wheat. We didn’t bugger up our soils last year and have got drilled up with decent crops this year. I think the whole soil health drive we have been on for a while is starting to show merit.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

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

  • 1,291
  • 1
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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