Informative Soya Bean Article
- Thread starter Soya UK
- Start date
Daniel
Member
- Location
- Mildenhall, Suffolk
The little costings box is calculated on a yield of 1t/ac, whereas the grower quoted between 0.7 and 0.8t/ac.
My fag packet maths shows a profit of about £100/ac at that level, before rent. Hardly something to get excited about given the potential to fail to get a crop at all.
My fag packet maths shows a profit of about £100/ac at that level, before rent. Hardly something to get excited about given the potential to fail to get a crop at all.
0.75 tonnes per acre is £300 gross output. Growing costs are quoted at £110 per acre. My fag packet makes that a gross margin of £190 per acre. Not too bad considering it was his first year. As he says in the article, there's a few things he might do differently.
Daniel
Member
- Location
- Mildenhall, Suffolk
Less:
£20ac - cultivations
£20ac - drilling
£15ac - spray and fert application
£35ac - combining
Rent, cost of storage, pre drilling roundup?
If he'd gambled on a late April planting date he might have got 2.5t/ha, alternatively he might have got a late frost?
I want to like these alternative break crop options, and we grow winter linseed, but they all require the grower to be a massive optimist with a faulty calculator.
Frost has no bearing on soya - the sowing date is to do with establishment temperatures (and actually has no bearing on yield either...) Sowing later is more of a gamble than sowing in May due to the principal threat of dry seedbeds.
You appear to be conflating fixed costs with variable costs. Your cultivations, rent, drilling, spray & fert applications and combining are all used to calculate Net margins rather than gross margins.......
As said before, the grower in the article has achieved £190 gross margin, but I suspect a £100/ acre net margin would be considered good on a lot of farms these days...........
Obviously the risk with winter linseed is frost hardiness, but you can't tar every crop with that brush.......
Daniel
Member
- Location
- Mildenhall, Suffolk
I'm not looking to knock Soya, I hope it takes off, transporting so much of our protein round the world is ridiculous when you think about it.
As to conflating anything with anything. I'm simply reckoning up some basic figures as to what margin you could expect from a crop. Gross margin is only useful for bench marking and PR, it's the money in your pocket once the crop is sold that will be of interest to the bank manager.
Daniel
Member
- Location
- Mildenhall, Suffolk
Well our break crops are beet, Land rented out for spuds and winter linseed.
Leaving aside the beet and potatoes which are more profitable than wheat anyway....
Winter linseed in the two years we have grown it would give a return on a par with what you are suggesting for Soya beans but with the added advantage of an early harvest and also a ton or so an acre of straw which was sold to a chap with an RHI burner.
shakerator
Member
- Location
- LINCS
- Location
- West Wales
Are you supplying it for the grower to do with what he wants or does it have to go back to you (Soya UK)
Also any organic Soya being grown yet and how successful is it?
Each grower is provided with a buy-back contract which doesn't have any tonnage commitment on it, and is open-market priced at the time of movement. Movement is by agreement as and when the grower is happy with the price proposal, and the grower is not obliged to sell it to us. So - we will buy all that you grow, but you are not obliged to sell it to us. We have some growers who are planning to sell to local pet-food companies who have the micronising equipment to cook the raw beans. (You can't feed raw beans to livestock due to the trypsin inhibitors).
Organic - i think we will have one or two growers this year. Soya doesn't get any particular pest or diseases, so the who thing hangs on weed control. A clean crop will die off and combine no problem without any desiccation, but a crop full of volunteer OSR and fat-hen will be a nightmare. If an organic grower has some very clean ground, or has inter-row cultivation kit, they could give it a go. For others it wouldn't be easy. On the upside, organic soya is worth serious money, and the N-fixation would be very useful......
- Location
- SG9
I have cut the quote down to the bit I refer too. If raw beans cant be fed to livestock what effect would be had by pigeon or pheasant feeding off them in the field?
- Location
- West Wales
How come they need micronising? Used to feed barley and peas mix straight off the combine for sheep [emoji848]
I'll try and phone you this week then!
I'll try and phone you this week then!
A couple of beans will have no effect. A few more, and they'll start to work out that they aren't too digestible. They won't drop dead, but they'll probably figure out that eating too many gives them a sore belly.....
Peas, beans, lupins, lentils etc don't contain trypsin inhibiting enzymes. (They can contain other anti-nutritional components eg. - the tannins in beans)
Soya beans and red kidney beans contain trypsin inhibiting enzymes that block the action of trypsin in the stomach. You need trypsin, since it is the main proteolytic enzyme that allows you to digest protein, so an inhibitor enzyme is bad news. Cooking the beans denatures the blocker enzyme in the beans, and your tummy is back in business.........