1000 acres or less can be farmed no till by one person with loads of free time. 500 acres or less would be a genuine part time job.There’s a part of me that thinks a lot of smaller growers like ploughing as it fills the days up with busyness and they are maybe unwilling to embrace no till as they may well become part time farmers, which is a subject many could not face, ignoring that the free time could be used to earn money which could ensure their survival, it’s going to be tough the next few years as support drops no doubt.
I used to like ploughing when I was a young hourly paid tractor driver ploughing 1000acres a year with a 5f Rev on a 125hp tractor, although it wrecked my back, now I’m a bit older, have a family and am responsible for the farm making money I only use the plough for some contracting on an organic farm, or to be precise my Tractor driver ploughs on contract, I did a weekend four years ago on a plough and would happily never use one again, I also would not like to go back to the period in my life after ploughing that consisted of Baling everything, Solo or Topdown light soils, then pressing and rolling them just to get the Rapid to work, looking back that was madness too, I’m now dd OSR and beans, single shallow cult for WW (mainly for BG and slugs) and SB, I’ve not bought any kit to do this other than a set of VOS openers for the drill, any CC’s are paid for under CS and grazed off with sheep, KISS is the aim here !!