Fish
Member
- Location
- North yorkshire
Yep, I guess, but you are closer to it than me.
Cultivating depths
- Thread starter Bman
- Start date
- Location
- northumberland
Only a couple of miles away but any sand stays too close to the water [emoji57]
Min till in NE Scotland.
Phase 1
Sell all the livestock.Sell as much organic matter off the farm as possible.Buy a heavy Cambridge roller to get that seedbed as smooth as possible so you can really shave that stubble,thus maximising straw sales.Plough deeper and deeper because compaction is inexplicably getting worse.Proceed thus for 30 years until the land is exhausted,then complain that yields have plateaued and you can't make profit because your costs are too high.Youre now ready to go min till.
Phase 2
Carefully choose a rotation which ignores the basic principles of good husbandry,such as clubroot and grass weed avoidance and concentrate solely on the best paying cash crops of the day.Be particularly careful not to include any crops which might provide long term benefits to soil structure and health.
Buy the fanciest most expensive glorified grubber available.Dont be too fussed about your choice because you'll be changing it for something better next year.
Instigate a traffic management plan on the farm road so the roundup delivery lorry doesn't hinder the slug pellet delivery lorry.
Proceed thus for about 4 years.Youre now ready to admit defeat and tell the world Mintill doesn't work.
Phase 3
Rent out the land for the highest amount of money possible.Be careful not to reinvest any of the proceeds back into the land.
My apologies to the several pioneers who are actually giving Mintill/no till a reasonable chance of success in NE Scotland.
Phase 1
Sell all the livestock.Sell as much organic matter off the farm as possible.Buy a heavy Cambridge roller to get that seedbed as smooth as possible so you can really shave that stubble,thus maximising straw sales.Plough deeper and deeper because compaction is inexplicably getting worse.Proceed thus for 30 years until the land is exhausted,then complain that yields have plateaued and you can't make profit because your costs are too high.Youre now ready to go min till.
Phase 2
Carefully choose a rotation which ignores the basic principles of good husbandry,such as clubroot and grass weed avoidance and concentrate solely on the best paying cash crops of the day.Be particularly careful not to include any crops which might provide long term benefits to soil structure and health.
Buy the fanciest most expensive glorified grubber available.Dont be too fussed about your choice because you'll be changing it for something better next year.
Instigate a traffic management plan on the farm road so the roundup delivery lorry doesn't hinder the slug pellet delivery lorry.
Proceed thus for about 4 years.Youre now ready to admit defeat and tell the world Mintill doesn't work.
Phase 3
Rent out the land for the highest amount of money possible.Be careful not to reinvest any of the proceeds back into the land.
My apologies to the several pioneers who are actually giving Mintill/no till a reasonable chance of success in NE Scotland.
Flintstone
Member
- Location
- Berkshire
Hmmm...
A chap with a 4 furrow plough and a combi drill who has no staff, 300 acres to get planted, a decent size lunchbox, and a wife with a good hobby is in a far better cost base position than a 1000 acre farmer with a Challenger, a TopDown, a full time bloke earning £25k per annum, a Carier, a Vaderstad drill, and a high maintenance wife who wants to put photos of herself pouting in smart places on Facebook every weekend.
All I'm saying is that min till doesn't actually save most people money when they do it, because they do too much of it. I've been there.
The older and uglier I get, the more I realise that the most efficient systems are the ones where people pay less out on staff, spend more time in the seat themselves, work to high standards, and have understanding/supportive spouses.
If they do this, and the system they use gets them the best crop margins, then what we should all be talking about is 'max-margin'and 'min-margin', not classifying or pigeonholing how we move our dirt as the 'right way' or the 'wrong way'.
Just saying...
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For me our scale limits our options, again a 300 acre farm, £42k of kit when purchased, including tractor. Ploughs, drills and folding rolls, all our land in 3 passes one with plough one with drill followed by rolling on most to max pre em results.
We have silt warp, and red clay, I have moved most of our strong land over to spring drilling, so the winter does the work preparing a good seed bed.
With only me providing labour.
It's not the fastest, but speed is not important on our scale, it's no good us, spending big chunks of money to save me a few days work.
I would agree on the other poster estimated fuel use, for my strong land, but it would be less on my silt warp.
It's the same for combining, our costs are at least half that of contractors,
As we can run old kit, even with brake down costs and fuel and any labour at harvest, it's still nearer £10/acre. Sometime less.
And we cut all our grain at or around 15% I think the biggest claim last year was 15.3% and we have no drying costs as we cannot do it.
The secret to good business is "small nut" and don't put them all in one basket...
I have seen lots of gimmicks come and go, some work some don't, but they all cost money to setup, and most just save time, and fuel if your lucky.
We have silt warp, and red clay, I have moved most of our strong land over to spring drilling, so the winter does the work preparing a good seed bed.
With only me providing labour.
It's not the fastest, but speed is not important on our scale, it's no good us, spending big chunks of money to save me a few days work.
I would agree on the other poster estimated fuel use, for my strong land, but it would be less on my silt warp.
It's the same for combining, our costs are at least half that of contractors,
As we can run old kit, even with brake down costs and fuel and any labour at harvest, it's still nearer £10/acre. Sometime less.
And we cut all our grain at or around 15% I think the biggest claim last year was 15.3% and we have no drying costs as we cannot do it.
The secret to good business is "small nut" and don't put them all in one basket...
I have seen lots of gimmicks come and go, some work some don't, but they all cost money to setup, and most just save time, and fuel if your lucky.
- Location
- roe valley
It is everything that fills the gap between between 'Direct Drill' and 'Ploughing'.
At one end of 'min till' you scratch the top and sow, so you can 'cover' more of your loss making rented land.
At the other end you have (deep breath) 'Non Inversion Tillage', which is for farmers who are just sh!t at ploughing.
Discuss.
At one end of 'min till' you scratch the top and sow, so you can 'cover' more of your loss making rented land.
At the other end you have (deep breath) 'Non Inversion Tillage', which is for farmers who are just sh!t at ploughing.
Discuss.
John 1594
Member
- Location
- Cambridgeshire
You forgot a bit....lets call it Phase 2.5
After failing with Mintill, you are now perfectly placed to sell all your cultivation kit, spend more and more time on the internet and then announce you have bought a no till drill, and that anyone who doesnt copy your idea is a backwards, medieval honcho who is raping the earth to death
As time goes on, you will find certain areas of the farm that don not respond well to no till, you will ask lots of questions before deciding to pay lots of money for soil tests, your ingrained, blinkered attitude preventing you from trying something cheap like running a cultivator through it
After a few more years, you decide the drill is the problem, and spend vast amounts of money modifying it, only to see your yields remain the same. From here you have 2 choices. Plough it, or go on to Phase 3
Ah well in that case i have min tilled with a 4metre power harrow and a 98hp 2wd tractor on more than one occasion then
- Location
- Bedfordshire
What a sh!t comment.
The reason that those of us on heavy land do not plough is time and cost.
My default cultivation is Simba SLD f/b 'cultipress' , then drill.
If I plough, I then have to press then power harrow and then 'cultipress' just to level and get the 'seedbed' into a place where it will 'weather'. ie 3x time and probably 2.5x cost.
I'm guessing if you are in Berwickshire you would not be arable if you had proper heavy soil - it would always be too wet.
PS I was national inter-university ploughing match champion in the 80's, and my operator in a previous job ploughed 1000's acres every year for 17 years - so I think we know how to plough.
Muddyboots
Member
- Location
- Suffolk
Brilliant post!
shakerator
Member
- Location
- LINCS
i know of a farmer that advocated ploughing the same land twice....so plough could be min till after all
- Location
- northumberland
Ah well in that case i have min tilled with a 4metre power harrow and a 98hp 2wd tractor on more than one occasion then
Certainly more minimal than a 6m solo etc behind a 600hp quadtrac
But many claim that's min till !
The question wasn't "what is efficient". It was "what is mintill"
However re efficiency I agree with you 100% although if he direct drilled that chap with the 4 furrow could actually get to see his wife and have a few more £ for a holiday maybe !
on 2-300 acres the man with the 4-5 furrow plough and 3 metre combi will have at least 50 weeks of the year to choose his holidays from.
edit- well on easy working land like ours he could.
As for min till we're far from that, but i don't believe 2 passes to be too bad to put seeds to bed.
SilliamWhale
Member
Anything more that is needed is bad
Why would anyone spend money they don't need to, it's beyond me
- Location
- S E Glos
Exactly. For all we regard ourselves as rational pragmatic types (i.e. 'farmers') we get all prissy and uppity when someone dares to suggest that they are using a Claydon for "No Till", when 20 pages later the "true no-tillers" are still screaming that its a cultivator drill...
Ditto the saintly degrees of min till / max till / scratch till / ploughing / sowing without GPS : handbags at dawn.
@snarling bee , if you haven't guessed already, my previous post was me stirring the pot and shortening the thread by 200 posts to its logical conclusion