Gross Margins

unlacedgecko

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Fife
Screenshot_20220521-162047.png
Screenshot_20220521-162058.png


Been doing some light reading on a Saturday afternoon.

Are these figures accurate? Makes grim reading. And confirms what @DrWazzock says about living off family labour and depreciation/old kit and DIY repairs.

What's the consensus on GM for 21/22/23? Will rising input costs swallow up recent increase in commodity prices?

These figures are exclusive of BPS and other subs. What does the future hold for cropping in a post BPS environment?
 

Wombat

Member
BASIS
Location
East yorks
View attachment 1037597View attachment 1037598

Been doing some light reading on a Saturday afternoon.

Are these figures accurate? Makes grim reading. And confirms what @DrWazzock says about living off family labour and depreciation/old kit and DIY repairs.

What's the consensus on GM for 21/22/23? Will rising input costs swallow up recent increase in commodity prices?

These figures are exclusive of BPS and other subs. What does the future hold for cropping in a post BPS environment?
But even the top 25% aren’t going to be retiring to the Bahamas at the age of 40
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Unsure. My aim has always to have £100/ac left over after all my costs which include a hefty mortgage but not including my labour because really its not a full- or even part-time job. However last years wheat is more likely to make £500/ac, and this harvest has the potential to make similar. Its next year (harvest 23) when the big costs really start to hit though, and despite having a reasonable carry over of fert, are likely to be much reduced. This is likely to be seen here with a decrease in wheat (high risk) and replacement with spring barley and winter beans.
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Linseed is reasonable profitable provided you drill it straight in, use farm saved seed, apply digestate, and leave it be. As soon as you start spending on it, then it becomes one of those "ah we really do it for the rotation" crops, which is rubbish as it has the potential to be a really weedy, pain in the arse crop.

Dont grow yellow linseed. Thats one of the three bits of wise advice I pass to my children.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
To be fair, the inclusion of 2020 figures would have reduced the average somewhat on a lot of farms. If they had been for 2018-2021 they’d have looked far less bad.

I’ve never understood why everyone gets excited about ground that can grow crops tbh. A half decently run sheep flock will normally return more, for less capital investment and risk, most years ime, certainly were the arable costs are hampered by small scale.
You have to be willing to get your hands dirty occasionally though.
 
To be fair, the inclusion of 2020 figures would have reduced the average somewhat on a lot of farms. If they had been for 2018-2021 they’d have looked far less bad.

I’ve never understood why everyone gets excited about ground that can grow crops tbh. A half decently run sheep flock will normally return more, for less capital investment and risk, most years ime, certainly were the arable costs are hampered by small scale.
You have to be willing to get your hands dirty occasionally though.
I have friends with arable and it’s a wholly different lifestyle but the machinery is eye watering money. They say they can have good runs but easy to spend it
 
To be fair, the inclusion of 2020 figures would have reduced the average somewhat on a lot of farms. If they had been for 2018-2021 they’d have looked far less bad.

I’ve never understood why everyone gets excited about ground that can grow crops tbh. A half decently run sheep flock will normally return more, for less capital investment and risk, most years ime, certainly were the arable costs are hampered by small scale.
You have to be willing to get your hands dirty occasionally though.
I wear gloves, pretty much all the time, even when driving the car.

Working as a drystone waller makes the crops & sheep seem pretty silly. According to one I know, he does the fancy work around high value houses.
 

Hampton

Member
BASIS
Location
Shropshire
Linseed is reasonable profitable provided you drill it straight in, use farm saved seed, apply digestate, and leave it be. As soon as you start spending on it, then it becomes one of those "ah we really do it for the rotation" crops, which is rubbish as it has the potential to be a really weedy, pain in the arse crop.

Dont grow yellow linseed. Thats one of the three bits of wise advice I pass to my children.
Straight after don’t eat yellow snow?
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
View attachment 1037597View attachment 1037598

Been doing some light reading on a Saturday afternoon.

Are these figures accurate? Makes grim reading. And confirms what @DrWazzock says about living off family labour and depreciation/old kit and DIY repairs.

What's the consensus on GM for 21/22/23? Will rising input costs swallow up recent increase in commodity prices?

These figures are exclusive of BPS and other subs. What does the future hold for cropping in a post BPS environment?
What does it mean?
As said we live off depreciation and undervalued family labour, and use our savings to smooth out cash flow. Some years we strike lucky and get and get the occasional bonanza like 2t per acre springs beans for a good price or 4t per acre winter barley, maybe even 4t winter wheat if every falls right but by and large we tread water.
Machinery prices are just insane for what’s in the job at our level. Wildly fluctuating costs and output prices are adding a new dimension of stress and pressure on cash flow. Spring droughts are putting us on a knife edge. We are bringing grass and sheep back but they are bloody hard work. This weekend with the ewes we’d normally be going round looking for mastitis, jabbing repeatedly then watching a gangrenous bag eventually fall off while trying to keep the flies off them. Wheat just doesn’t give that kind of gut wrenching grief. There can be losses with arable but not the kind of up close in your face painful sadness that typify livestock. Though maybe it’s because we’d been doing it all wrong or cared too much or over fed them or mollycoddled them or something.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
To get the good prices early on, sheep were a massive amount of work. I don’t care what anybody says. Maybe if it was all sheep and no arable it would actually be easier as it’s just one thing to sort out but then parasites build up in the leys and you get issues.
Cattle, well they are different thing again.
No. No. No.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I think when we had livestock, problems maybe arose due to high inputs pushing high outputs. We had lots of clover in the leys so calves/lambs got too big before birth, sucklers produced the volumes of milk that a dairy cow would have been proud of, but it lead to over strained under milked udders. Yeah we had some cracking fat lambs early summer but it came at a price. Meanwhile the cull ewe who spent the winter in the orchard living on nothing produced two nice small lambs herself one night with no attention. They weren’t fat till February the next year but arguably had as good a margin.
I’m also worried about the reliance on expensive inputs on the arable side. It’s cat and mouse with rusts and fungicides. Many crops will soon need a permanent system of spray nozzles suspended over them the way things are going live a sort of intensive care ward for plants. It’s all going away robustness with lower output towards weak systems with higher but very precarious output. Saw this with beet. Apply fungicide to get 5% more yield, they said. Now there are strains of Cescospora that are resistant to all fungicides. Nice one. Good work. Scientists and salesmen created a problem out of nowhere.
Same with obliterating all insect life just to prevent virus in crops. Well hey ho. We should have just lived with random low and high yields due to virus and had higher average output prices to compensate. It depresses me so much to apply insecticides and see the ensuing carnage that in many cases I just refuse to do it any more.
Rant over. Not really on thread but it’s turning me away from the industry quite frankly.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Sheep = bred for too much wool = maggots = insecticide.
Sheep = intensive for high output = cocktail of workers = resistance etc etc
When will we break this destructive cycle?

Short haired robust sheep? Goats?

Are we missing something?
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 6 3.2%

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

  • 1,287
  • 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/
Top