Cost of production

[Cowabunga]

It's funny when the boots on my other foot I have to cost everything down to the penny as if you can't compete on price you are burried

Yes, but you can decide what price to buy and what price to sell and set your own margin. If there is no margin you can just not trade, as your costs are mainly yourself and you have other income as well.
You know as well as anyone that your current business is not anything like your farming business as was.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

It's about taking opertunities, you can do that in farming although it's a little harder in milk production.

 

[endeavour]

Is that a compliment Cowabunga?

 

[Derrick Hughes]

To many people treet livestock like a life sentence and not a crop

 

[neilo]

Or making a crap product which couldn't compete with something that actually worked. Morris Marina or Datsun Sunny? It's wasn't the COP here. It was the fact that the Datsun was a good, reliable car which was well built whereas the Marina was a heap of crap, badly put together by a bunch of militant socialist slackers.

And I was thinking someone was going to bring up the mighty Land Rover again.

 

[uztrac]

When you mention China, it reminds me of how in recent years, while Europe were all planning to expand in order to export mountains of food to China & India, they were buying up massive swaths of fertile parts of Africa to feed themselves from.

I was in Africa during the initial period,and your statement is correct.Also the wealthy Arab states were doing similar things in The Sudan,in particular the Kuwait Fund.
I read somewhere this week that President Putin is to make major investments in his own agribusiness sector,thereby closing another door on UK exports of ag products.

 

[Campbell]

Business advice I always try to apply. "It's not what you can sell it for, it's what you can buy it for that matters"

 

[Brisel]

Be interesting to see if fert and chemical prices reduce as a result for arable farms. I am a firm believer these costs are priced according to profitability of the typical English ' Loam Farm' of 2-400 Ha. I too want a little bit more money for the produce than we a are currently seeing.

The spend on lime, phosphate & potash certainly seems to be well down in my area. I'm hoping to pick up some Fibrophos cheaply soon. I don't foresee a drop in any prices any time in the future. Until growers stop buying, the supply trade won't discount to sell it. How much fallow is there this autumn? Not a lot according to the posts all summer.

Forgive the Halloween analogy, but prices seem to go up like a rocket then come down like its stick...