Cost of spraying

[holywell farmer]

Go and look on the chemical price tracker and the prices on TFF Marketplace as a starting place for a comparison between different agro chems!

Cheers

 

[holywell farmer]

Price ! My agronomist is not a salesman

How mad would that be ! ...... <clive lights blue touch paper and closes lid on laptop !>

Met fert once, he claimed selling best fertiliser on the market.

 

[holywell farmer]

Met fert once, he claimed selling best fertiliser on the market.

Said if buy cheap get rubbish

 

[Joseph]

Just sold a 5 year old SP and it has cost me circa £6.20 per hectare sprayed if you spread the costs evenly over the 41,500 hectares it has sprayed. Realistically some of the work should be charged at above £15/hectare, due to the poor work rates and awkwardness of the work.

 

[Chae1]

Met fert once, he claimed selling best fertiliser on the market.

Was fert a nice guy?

 

[holywell farmer]

Was fert a nice guy?

Yes,

 

[holywell farmer]

Was fert a nice guy?

Meant fert rep,

 

[warksfarmer]

Just sold a 5 year old SP and it has cost me circa £6.20 per hectare sprayed if you spread the costs evenly over the 41,500 hectares it has sprayed. Realistically some of the work should be charged at above £15/hectare, due to the poor work rates and awkwardness of the work.

All in fuel, insurance, mot, nroso, repairs etc?

 

[Al R]

Met fert once, he claimed selling best fertiliser on the market.

There’s also good and bad makes of fertiliser, good and bad makes of pesticides.

There’s a huge variation in quality with cheaper fert to premium fert. At 12m wide you wouldn’t notice a lot, spread at 24m+ and it’s a massive difference. I was once given a “cheaper” fertiliser from a grain buyer as contra, I wasn’t happy but it was the only way of being paid and I needed 60t of N there and then! It ended up spreading 18-20 metres through a brand new KV spinner set at 24m.

In terms of good and bad pesitcides some use cheaper cans that don’t empty clean or have badly resigned cans that take an age to wash out. Some makes a product will sediment in the bottom and the same actives of a different make will be fine.

 

[DanielBennett]

Here I am in New Zealand working as an agricultural spraying contractor. Firstly I should point out most of our work is for stock farmers, eg. Glyphosate for spraying off grass and old fodder crops, insecticides, pre and post emergence on fodder crops. Many farms here are in the order of 5000 hectares plus (and the Kiwi farmers love nothing more than trying to cultivate sides of (steep steep) hills). We use foam markers plus GPS, no autosteer. The reason for foam which is preferred is GPS doesn't show the many obstacles which are ready to bend and break booms!

We use 15 metre booms, and are self-sufficient, ie. finding own water and mixing for ourselves. A good day is 100 hectares, a reasonable day is 60 to 70 ha.

The whole operation is fundamentally set up so that when the phone call is made, one of us will be there within 24 hours, with the chemical needed.

Many advantages to farmers: timeliness, no chemical storage, no half containers knocking around, paying only for the chemical used, experienced operators. 1 bill for complete service.

As the operator my biggest challenge is one miserable old git of a farmer who doesn't supply farm maps, or particularly like to show us where to spray, rather he likes to try and explain over the phone directions. One day I will without doubt spray the wrong field! This goes against every ounce of my professionalism.

 

[TREVD]

It’s very surprising how the costs of spraying add up.We went from using a contractor to doing our own again. We spray 1200+ acres a year and brought a Amarzon front /back tank combo and thought we could manage with out buying another tractor but failed simply because we seem to find something to spray 9 months a year !
Other costs sprayer MOT , row crop wheels sprayer parts which seem to mount up/ breakage and also joining NROSO with outings 2/3 times a year to pick up points, then here’s a cost for fuel , depreciation and also somebody to drive it .
But long term right! We can cut rates where we want and spray when we want.

 

[holywell farmer]

There’s also good and bad makes of fertiliser, good and bad makes of pesticides.

There’s a huge variation in quality with cheaper fert to premium fert. At 12m wide you wouldn’t notice a lot, spread at 24m+ and it’s a massive difference. I was once given a “cheaper” fertiliser from a grain buyer as contra, I wasn’t happy but it was the only way of being paid and I needed 60t of N there and then! It ended up spreading 18-20 metres through a brand new KV spinner set at 24m.

In terms of good and bad pesitcides some use cheaper cans that don’t empty clean or have badly resigned cans that take an age to wash out. Some makes a product will sediment in the bottom and the same actives of a different make will be fine.

I forget most stuff I learned about fertiliser from college days, would scare me to set up spreader and cover a field to be honest

 

[Al R]

I forget most stuff I learned about fertiliser from college days, would scare me to set up spreader and cover a field to be honest

All I learnt in my college about fertiliser spreaders was don’t start a vicon full of nitram up in the workshop when the workshop is full of diss assembled engines and gearboxes.... we filled them to the top before she eventually stopped

 

[holywell farmer]

All I learnt in my college about fertiliser spreaders was don’t start a vicon full of nitram up in the workshop when the workshop is full of diss assembled engines and gearboxes.... we filled them to the top before she eventually stopped

I did spread fert on small paddock fields years ago on beef and sheep farm worked on,
Think main thing is to avoid striping a field