Fertiliser Price Tracker

DRC

Member
Even with fert where it is I couldn’t make the figures add up buying crop in. 30 bales for £900 doesn’t go far. My 10k fert bill would only buy 330 bales. I need 1600. 75kg/ acre of urea is £50ish/acre, £5 bale at 10 bales acre. There’s no real cheap fodder round our area. To many mouths!
I thought reading the reports on here that stuff was a lot cheaper . I suppose It depends on location
 

e3120

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northumberland
I’m amazed more people aren’t looking at buying cheap fodder that’s available . Could well be cheaper than buying fertiliser .
Most fodder for sale (cheap or otherwise) is only useful for ticking stock over. It's never going to fatten cattle or make milk without a lot of help.

I must say that I would hesitate in including you in that generalisation, as despite never having seen your bales, we know how you farm.
 
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@JR101
You only have to go back to 2008, I think it was... stand to be corrected without checking back.
Some wheat had sold for approaching £200 per ton, so early Nitram at Cereals event started at about £300 and got to £329. Urea peaked at about £425.
Best thing to have done was nothing, it was all back 100 quid by April.
I bought some old stock potato fertiliser that year around Christmas time, when I went to use it in April it was near solid and wouldn't run out of the horsetine applicator, never bought again until I needed it.
 

Farma Parma

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Northumberlandia
No mention of mixed farming, or the fact that if any of us had carried on farming like it was 1922 we wouldn't have survived the lean years between 1996 - 2007?
Bagged fert has been the only game in town, and it will remain so. For all of the 'environmentalism' thrown at farmers, not one of the experts can put the lid back on Pandoras Box / Norman Borlaugs 'Green Revolution', or explain how we feed 8 billion people with token gestures.

We're farmers, not alchemists. We can't produce 14,000,000 tonnes of wheat a year (etc) using only 'sound bites' and good intentions. The nation apparently demands we continue to feed 70 million people while "working towards Net Zero". If they want us to farm like it's 1922, then we'll need to almost halve the population back to 38 million (1921 census) and accept that they're going to be kept alive on pretty thin soup. Vegan diets, organic farming, regenerative farming, direct drilling, (Insert next farming fad here) etc etc; the sum of these doesn't come near to touching the sides of what we are being asked to achieve.
Well said (y)
 

Hindsight

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
Just out of interest for any of the more experienced farmers on here, I'm fairly young and haven't had a long career in agriculture, have you or your parents/grandparents ever experienced a spike in fertiliser prices before?

To the extent that we are experiencing now?

Also does everyone believe that if less fertiliser is used then there could be a reasonable reduction in harvests?

It just seems crazy if it were to happen, I can't imagine a situation where we're short of food... I'm only in my 30's! I'm sure if my grandparents were alive today they would tell me about such times!

2007 2008. Google fert prices 2007 and 2008 and you will find plenty of contemporary news articles.


Followed in 2011 by the Arab Spring for which one of causes was rising food prices. Destabilised the region and led indirectly to the Syrian conflict and war for West and the Russians. So the world powers will be watching closely in the Foreign Office, State Department USDA etc. Even if we think they are not.
 
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everyone who has paid heavily will regret it come spring as the mild winter will help prices down,don’t be conned by the merchants.hold off buying
Having bought about 60% of this years needs at near the top end of the market I certainly have no regrets as yet, other than I should have bought sooner, indeed I do wonder should I have bought more when I did or can I get away with using none later in the season on grass.
I don’t expect any large scale drop in price before new season prices are released about June but best not take my advice cos i thought it was dear when it got to £300 and as I watched it soar I thought it must start dropping soon

Edit
And I’m not convinced how big the drops will be later in the season
 

cricketandcrops

Member
BASIS
Location
Lincolnshire
Depends though . My crops have plenty of biomass apart from one late drilled ( Nov ) after beet .
last year I had a block after rape that was also very forward ( it does get plenty of pig slurry pre drilling), and I left it alone until late March and only used 140 units in old money . Yielded 3.8 tons and more importantly stayed up .
I won’t be in any rush to waste fertiliser this spring .
Yes, if I was in the west where is always rains :) I would be less concerned about using lower dose early, I tend to cut back on first dose after chicken muck. But I am also well aware of here our driest month is often March or April so need to get plenty on early, even on forward crops I tend to not cut too much, growth reg is cheap, losing tillers is costly. Also tweak rates depending on N source.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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  • 1
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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