Investment in backward wheat crops.

[York]

there are no decisions made over here. Still covered in white snow.
Best investment now: Holiday for farm & family. With this spend money the least damage is done.
told of people to plant potatoes in 10 cm nice soil on top of a frost layer. Because it's the date, they have to get into the soil.
My advice for our people: do as much possible to lay a good foundation for healthy crop. Get the S & B into the soil / onto so the plants can get it from the tip of the root to the tip of the highest leaf and be healthy.
1st agronomist come now around the corner and publish: By the way, B should be taken up by the root to be rely effective. Same one was saying other story for how long?
York-Th.

 

[Jim Bullock]

I heard today that Hutchinsons' stores are completely full and they can not take more chemical and obviously no farmer wants any delivered to farm. I hope their bank manager if sympathetic, can not say I am. Too many year of selling crap we do not really need, hopefully people are waking up to the rubbish that has been said now and the past. I am with Jim, we now have to start farming again!

Andy
Thanks for your reply...as always I thought I was the only one who who questioned the "normal"...I started 16 years ago with direct-drilling (on 300ha) and with a bit of experience now find that I do not need 2 x 200hp+ tractors 30,000 litres of fuel/annum...just one 140hp tractor and 12,500 litres of fuel (if you take fuel bill x 4 x by fuel cost it gives you a guide to your machinery costs) so for us 30,000 x 4 x £0,65 = £78.,000 down to £32,500..saving of £42K ...then we moved on to fertiliser...annual bill £50K now nearer £30K ...£20K saving...and chemicals £30K now nearer to £20K £10k saving...all at a time when everybody else was seeing a massive increases in input costs... So with savings of £72,000 I could afford to see a yield drop of 0.5 tons /acre (390 tons@£185/ton) and still be as competitive as before but we are not seeing those yield drops so I wonder why so many farmers buy in to the likes of the multi-nationals and dont do a bit of "blue-sky" thinking for themselves...Anybody who lets an agronomist loose (independant or company) loose on their farm and just applys what comes upo n the recommendation sheet are in my mind either very wealthy or mad...

 

[Andy Howard]

I think they are scared. Told by everyone if they don't apply x y z then the crop will do badly. What makes me laugh is that if you add up all the claimed yield increases of all the products applied then we really should be getting 20 tonne wheat.

 

[Jim Bullock]

I think they are scared. Told by everyone if they don't apply x y z then the crop will do badly. What makes me laugh is that if you add up all the claimed yield increases of all the products applied then we really should be getting 20 tonne wheat.

I work on applying around 22 kgs N for every ton/ha of (realistically) expected yield...so 7.5tons/ha = 165 kgs/ha N....but our winter wheat yields are usually nearer to 8.75 tons/ha so we are getting 30 kgs of N (15% inc) from within our system (crop residues perhaps?) With some cover crops and a more normal year I think we could improve on those figures and it (nitrogen) has to be the "energy" area that needs our attention as it accounts for well over 50% of our energy input...
As for fungicides...I am told there is evidence that applying a fungicide to a healthly crop can actually reduce its yield potential..not a fact that is published too often..and the evidence is hard to find...unless you talk to the right people ...

 

[York]

I work on applying around 22 kgs N for every ton/ha of (realistically) expected yield...so 7.5tons/ha = 165 kgs/ha N....but our winter wheat yields are usually nearer to 8.75 tons/ha so we are getting 30 kgs of N (15% inc) from within our system (crop residues perhaps?) With some cover crops and a more normal year I think we could improve on those figures and it (nitrogen) has to be the "energy" area that needs our attention as it accounts for well over 50% of our energy input...
As for fungicides...I am told there is evidence that applying a fungicide to a healthly crop can actually reduce its yield potential..not a fact that is published too often..and the evidence is hard to find...unless you talk to the right people ...

Jim,
I give you a hint of why this evidence is hard to find. We have at least one of the govermental research stations, in a summer drought region, which is regularly taken out of the overview on fungi application. Always they have a reason why it should not be published. Always it was a technical one, like: Personal did use wrong rate & nozzles or such "excuses".
Now why do they do this? very easy. When they use fungi, especially the Strobi, they keep the plants longer green = longer water evaporation = less yield. They have yield decreases up to 1.5 t/ha when using fungi.
Now regional farmers can know this as they have personal contact to the local research personal, but still majority of the local farmers are using fungi!
we have even more snow.
York-Th.
Still most

 

[York]

Easy way to find out the effectiveness of each application is using the approach of a "roling zero plot".
What do I mean by that?
1st full tramm line you shut of the sprayer or use a open cut Big Bag to cover some area when application of fertiliser. Just do this on 10 m length. At the end of the 10 m push in the marking rod and did a good hole on the side of the tramline.
Next time you came back with the next round of application: Start the next Zero parcel at the end of the previous Zero parcel and do another 10 m without application. Dig a hole and get the marking rod to mark the end of the last zero plat.
When you do this on a couple of fields you will have at the end of the year a good overview of what had which effect and what is making or loosing money.
Mind you, on herbicides I would just close 1 or 2 sections on the sprayer, so in the end you might need to mow the plot down.
I know that many crop advisers don't like this and in one case the advisor said to the farmer: "If you do this I will cancel the contract with you be4cause in you using this you are questioning my expertise." The farmer was scared but now, a couple of years later, the farmers son is starting to understand things and the consultant got his seat placed in front of the door. Never got good profits, high inputs but never corresponding yields. But never was willing to revise his inputs because there where just limitations on the ability of the staff, farming workmanshift, so this farm needs to work on some fundamentals and not on more sophisticated inputs.
York-Th.

 

[Clive]

Easy way to find out the effectiveness of each application is using the approach of a "roling zero plot".
What do I mean by that?
1st full tramm line you shut of the sprayer or use a open cut Big Bag to cover some area when application of fertiliser. Just do this on 10 m length. At the end of the 10 m push in the marking rod and did a good hole on the side of the tramline.
Next time you came back with the next round of application: Start the next Zero parcel at the end of the previous Zero parcel and do another 10 m without application. Dig a hole and get the marking rod to mark the end of the last zero plat.
When you do this on a couple of fields you will have at the end of the year a good overview of what had which effect and what is making or loosing money.
Mind you, on herbicides I would just close 1 or 2 sections on the sprayer, so in the end you might need to mow the plot down.
I know that many crop advisers don't like this and in one case the advisor said to the farmer: "If you do this I will cancel the contract with you be4cause in you using this you are questioning my expertise." The farmer was scared but now, a couple of years later, the farmers son is starting to understand things and the consultant got his seat placed in front of the door. Never got good profits, high inputs but never corresponding yields. But never was willing to revise his inputs because there where just limitations on the ability of the staff, farming workmanshift, so this farm needs to work on some fundamentals and not on more sophisticated inputs.
York-Th.

We often just miss a tramline on purpose so we can keep an idea of how new things are working

One of the best methods I have seen at field scale was to apply to every other tramline giving a field average of applied and unapplied and then the field harvested and yield mapped in the same pattern

 

[rob1]

would love to cut down fungicides but if I look at the corners when I swing round without backing into them to avoid the wheelings after gs32 the disease is awful, sometimes I think it is the bag N that makes crops more liable to disease but in the case of corners they dont get much N, the problem is once on the roundabout of inputs it is harder and harder to get off

 

[Fuzzy]

We often just miss a tramline on purpose so we can keep an idea of how new things are working

One of the best methods I have seen at field scale was to apply to every other tramline giving a field average of applied and unapplied and then the field harvested and yield mapped in the same pattern

What kind of results do you get?? Do you see a lot more variation with the untreated crop?

 

[Elmsted]

Did 2 years of trials on all combinable crops on the family farm in Kent in late 80's.
With full 3 replicates. of each checking out spray application technology. Pain was needing 4 sprayers to hook up on a day and do samething. But consistently the untreated plots of rape out performed treated.

Since then just plant the stuff and wait to see whats there in spring. Fertilise and do one spray essential in my view at 20 pod stage on main stem of an insecticide. Since 1990 this has not been reducing what I have grown compared to mainstream. Even though moved around a bit.