Cereals...gross margin at different yeilds?

Hindsight

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
I meant minimum fungicides for our area..
I agree septoria is our major problem, but there's still room for less inputs..
or at least, less than we traditionally have used..

Only if you utilise plant genetics. Septoria resistance will be essential in your area, unless an exceptionally dry May/June for Cornwall. But ignore me as I have not been to South West England since the mid 90's when I used to visit to look at field brassicas and daffs. And I am a Fenman, six toes an all.
 

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
I participate in the Dorset version (with @ZXR17 ) and for the last few years, especially the high disease ones, the highest spend has won. Our team won it 3 years in a row by spending the most until we got a low disease year and other teams copied our strategy. We switched to something more “commercial” and have been in the top 5 since, despite using lots of Syngenta products ;)
My agronomist and I like thinking outside the box, to test various ideas like No Triazoles, No Chlorothalinyl etc. It amazes us how many times such strategies win or nearly win.
One that did very well this year (though not ours) was Mancozeb, followed by Folpet, followed by Folpet, followed by Mancozeb at approx £25/ha total spend, coming third. Our Syngenta local head, put that one in. His Triazoles UTD came 2nd!
The average team spend in 2019 for the Warwick site was £65/ha. The winner spent £76 achieving a MOFC of just under £180. AHDB spent £150/ha, with a MOFC of £95/ha, almost bottom of the table!
There are various things we can do to save cost, such as using generics rather than branded products.
There are also various ways of using a product more than once avoiding using it illegally by using the same active in two different brands, such as Elatus and Velogy. Though this year it was just using Elatus once at T2 with Epic at T1, won it (both with CTL and Amistar Opti at T3)
We have won it three times officially and once unofficially. Several times we have tried using a repeat the following year. But it never seems to do well.
In your high disease area, it doesn’t surprise me that the highest spend usually wins. Our area can swap from high to low risk each year. trying to guess which way it will go is challenging. But we can reduce rates, cut various actives to nil or even cancel T0 if we want to, days before each application. The last 2 years, T0 has not paid.
Most amazing of all is that my Agronomist is 84! He and I always spend at least half a day pulling the results apart to find the trends. However, the trends tend to have become more obvious as years go by. We also look at what neighbouring Fungicide Challenge results are. Spend more in the West and less in the East is almost always the case.
I often think Syngenta are very clever to do the Challenge. From where we are to heading further East, what it shows again and again is that Fungicides are the least most cost effective spend we put through our sprayers. Yet Syngenta scare the pants off, getting us to talk about them all the time to and make us want to use them by holding such competitions.
Clever marketing!
 
Last edited:

Farma Parma

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Northumberlandia
you can waste a lot of money chasing highest yield

highest profit is far more important . . .
Had best yields ever in 2015 with no more costs that year before or year after but actually made less money
for two simple reasons, world was awash with grain esp uk in 2015 & price was lower
More costs per Ac to process each ton tho.
I made easily £40k more in 2018 with 250t less of product that 2015 as the price was an ave of £50/t more.
Yield isnt always king. it should be but it just isnt.
to just add but dont know final figures yet 100+ ton more in 2019 but easily half the profit.
Its worth less ???
Who would farm eh :unsure:
 
I compared some costs for '19 Wheat with a grower on similar soils taking a lower input approach
130kg/ha N v 240kgN/ha
35% lower spend on fungs

The gist of the results were he spent 25% less on VC's but my yield was 33% higher, that gave me a £460/ha better GM

There's lots of variables to make sense of within that, but a higher level of inputs seems to pay here, not saying it's right or wrong, but that's a lot of cash!!

I think farming with less inputs takes as much or more knowledge than farming with more, I'm using less than I did 5 years ago for sure, ditching second wheats and WB in favour of SB helps a lot too, but cutting back too much, at least without any environmental money behind it to assist, can be costly, but something that's going to happen no doubt...

I'm on relatively infertile thin chalks, reducing N probably has a bigger factor on yield than less fung, @ajd132 maybe in a better situation on his Hanslope clays, and being in a lower disease pressure area??

I've been advocating that people spend less on fertilisers for a while now. With the rise of AD units and broilers and the like there should be minimal need to go buying in P and K and in reality saving a few lorry loads of nitrogen could soon pay for your own tanker or tower store for digestate...
 
My agronomist and I like thinking outside the box, to test various ideas like No Triazoles, No Chlorothalinyl etc. It amazes us how many times such strategies win or nearly win.
One that did very well this year (though not ours) was Mancozeb, followed by Folpet, followed by Folpet, followed by Mancozeb at approx £25/ha total spend, coming third. Our Syngenta local head, put that one in. His Triazoles UTD came 2nd!
The average team spend in 2019 for the Warwick site was £65/ha. The winner spent £76 achieving a MOFC of just under £180. AHDB spent £150/ha, with a MOFC of £95/ha, almost bottom of the table!
There are various things we can do to save cost, such as using generics rather than branded products.
There are also various ways of using a product more than once avoiding using it illegally by using the same active in two different brands, such as Elatus and Velogy. Though this year it was just using Elatus once at T2 with Epic at T1, won it (both with CTL and Amistar Opti at T3)
We have won it three times officially and once unofficially. Several times we have tried using a repeat the following year. But it never seems to do well.
In your high disease area, it doesn’t surprise me that the highest spend usually wins. Our area can swap from high to low risk each year. trying to guess which way it will go is challenging. But we can reduce rates, cut various actives to nil or even cancel T0 if we want to, days before each application. The last 2 years, T0 has not paid.
Most amazing of all is that my Agronomist is 84! He and I always spend at least half a day pulling the results apart to find the trends. However, the trends tend to have become more obvious as years go by. We also look at what neighbouring Fungicide Challenge results are. Spend more in the West and less in the East is almost always the case.
I often think Syngenta are very clever to do the Challenge. From where we are to heading further East, what it shows again and again is that Fungicides are the least most cost effective spend we put through our sprayers. Yet Syngenta scare the pants off, getting us to talk about them all the time to and make us want to use them by holding such competitions.
Clever marketing!

Try as I might, comparing fungicides for me was always as dull as dishwater. And secondly, I don't think Syngenta have been on the money with their fungicides for a long time. Elatus Era, fast on rusts. Great.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
is compaction not a bigger issue on heavier soils?

Compaction is an issue on all soils. Clays can carry weight better generally where you’d sink out of sight on peat or sand. Hanslope type clays can crack when dried out so can self structure. Sand is prone to slumping and pure silt will not self structure.

Of course prevention is better than cure so do your best but if you don’t take a risk occasionally you don’t get anything done either. Being right and broke isn’t any use!
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Moving to a lot more spring barley has been abit of a revelation. Dad who has been a hardcore wheat grower all of his life actually said something along the lines of, ‘we have to buy wheat crops now’.
Spring barley is a high margin crop if you can store it well and hit premiums. And it costs bugger all to grow. It’s all down to establishment and the weather. I can’t believe people actually pay agronomists full whack to tell them what to do on spring cereals.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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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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