Are Contractors rates having to go up.

Banana Bar

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Its come as a shock here that our main contractor in this area ( West Somerset) is packing in next April . The father who is now 70 wants to rightly retire properly, he has meant to slow down the last 5 years but it has nt worked but the son ( in his 30 s) has decided not to carry on with the buisness although he has been a enthusiastic hard worker since leaving school . Combination of young family / long hours for not much money plus ever increasing costs, weather issues( ie flat out v nothing possible) but main thing he said is the enjoyment has gone out the job , it's just rush rush rush and hassle s.

Going to cause quite a problem as there is no one else in the wings to replace them especially combining . They ran 3 machines ( I drove one for them) but none of the farmers who have their own either don t want to do contract or they are at full capacity . Not sure yet what I will do with mine but got 9 months to sort it out.
Ps I use to be a contractor / farmer myself until 2015 so already got the t shirt so no don t want to go back !
Is he selling the business or just kit?
 

Pennine Ploughing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Local contractor is giving up SP chopping and combining,
Not sure if fuel had anything to do with it.
but have heard staff is the biggest problem, getting anyone to work nights and weekends seems to be the issue,
He has another line of business and far easier to get stafffor that from whats been said
 
Location
southwest
Just as a matter of interest, the Company I work for subs out a lot of long distance haulage.

To be fair with the prices we pay we are now costing jobs through a fuel escalator using RHA agreed prices (inc 12.5% margin) per mile and recalculating with agreed average Derv price for the week. It's surprising how little difference the recent steep rises have affected the final cost-less than 5% in most cases.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 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

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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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