Spring Drilling
- Thread starter Grain Buyer
- Start date
4course
Member
- Location
- north yorks
just to stir things up, why cover crops? we sow a grass ley for same effect we use the crop to make product to sell or graze pretty much the same soil improving benefits as well as helping with 3 crop rule, catch crop imo much more beneficial to the business, this is where some cheap mustard mix comes into its own, satisfys greening no need to include hedges dykes margins etc improves soil as clearly seen in our crops following that are lying drier at the moment reduces weeds/pests enables all autumn cereal/cropping before mid oct ,and as regards combinable spring cropping can only think of 1 crop of peas years ago that made a better margin than autumn sown anything in our farming history so we would avoid spring cropping i
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- Location
- Forfar,Angus,Scotland
Changes to the greening rules in scotland will mean i can't use my vining pea ground so i will definately have more fallow,not upset about that though as i will take out the more marginal areas on the farm and grow on the better land,our costs are the same across our cropped areas so not a lot of point in drilling the 2t/ac ground when spring barley prices look like being around the £100/t mark.Our 5yr average for spring barley is 2.75/t ac but i would like to think by dropping our poorer bits we can pull that up to nearer 3.
Feldspar
Member
- Location
- Essex, Cambs and Suffolk
It doesn't make sense to stop cropping your less than perfect land to try and magic up your yields. That can be done on a longer term basis provided that fixed costs are cut proportionately.
If you have a 400ha farm of which 200ha can produce 10 t/ha wheat crops and the rest produces 6 t/ha. Let's say that fixed costs are 500 £/ha spread over the 400ha. Even at 110 £/t you would still expect to make a small return after variable costs at 6 t/ha - let's say, looking at the TAG forecasts for GMs for this coming harvest, that you'll return 125 £/ha from a 6 t/ha feed wheet crop. The 10 t/ha part of the farm will be returning 565 £/ha after variable costs (assumed to be 535 £/ha).
If you crop the entire area you will just about make money on the 10 t/ha land, and you'll lose money on the 6 t/ha land. Overall your net return will be £-124,000.
Now what happens if you don't bother to crop the 6t/ha area "because it's not making any money"? Suddenly you double your fixed costs on the 10t/ha land and incur say a 30 £/ha cost on the fallow land for glyphosate. Now you're losing a bit of money on the fallow but a lot on the 10t/ha crops. Overall your net return is about £-184,000.
In the second scenario you might feel happier producing really good wheat crops, but you'll be worse off than if you cropped the poor land too.
This all comes back to the thread I started a while back about how variable fixed costs are. I'm assuming that you can't really vary your fixed costs. In Gary Markham's example he moved fuel into the variable costs column (and arguably you can put something from machinery repairs in as well for wearing metal), but the result still came out the same.
On top of all of this, how the hell does anyone know what the price of commodities is going to be in a year's time? Personally I think it is a much better strategy to slim the fixed costs over time and to make them more variable which will set the business up to be able to survive times as these and to be able to pick up the pieces when others fall apart.
If you have a 400ha farm of which 200ha can produce 10 t/ha wheat crops and the rest produces 6 t/ha. Let's say that fixed costs are 500 £/ha spread over the 400ha. Even at 110 £/t you would still expect to make a small return after variable costs at 6 t/ha - let's say, looking at the TAG forecasts for GMs for this coming harvest, that you'll return 125 £/ha from a 6 t/ha feed wheet crop. The 10 t/ha part of the farm will be returning 565 £/ha after variable costs (assumed to be 535 £/ha).
If you crop the entire area you will just about make money on the 10 t/ha land, and you'll lose money on the 6 t/ha land. Overall your net return will be £-124,000.
Now what happens if you don't bother to crop the 6t/ha area "because it's not making any money"? Suddenly you double your fixed costs on the 10t/ha land and incur say a 30 £/ha cost on the fallow land for glyphosate. Now you're losing a bit of money on the fallow but a lot on the 10t/ha crops. Overall your net return is about £-184,000.
In the second scenario you might feel happier producing really good wheat crops, but you'll be worse off than if you cropped the poor land too.
This all comes back to the thread I started a while back about how variable fixed costs are. I'm assuming that you can't really vary your fixed costs. In Gary Markham's example he moved fuel into the variable costs column (and arguably you can put something from machinery repairs in as well for wearing metal), but the result still came out the same.
On top of all of this, how the hell does anyone know what the price of commodities is going to be in a year's time? Personally I think it is a much better strategy to slim the fixed costs over time and to make them more variable which will set the business up to be able to survive times as these and to be able to pick up the pieces when others fall apart.
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- Location
- Forfar,Angus,Scotland
Surely one model doesn't fit all,we are a family farm owner occupier,no rented land,only use seasonal labour when required,all machinery paid,no finance or borrowings,by not planting our less productive areas we will be able to stretch our existing machiney a yr or 2 longer,different story if i was on a rented farm with a few men working for me.Not ideal leaving land fallow but as said due to changes in greening it has to be done anyway.
Mr Charisma
Member
- Location
- stratford on Avon
Mr Flintstone , perhaps some of these cover crop growers have been to see ' project lamport' or stow longa , both very good demonstration sites trying to grow both winter and spring cereals on very heavily infested blackgrass sites . Certainly opened my eyes and seeing the project lamport trials growing a good clean crop of spring wheat with no grass weed killer except for a splash of glypho was definitely food for thought . In fact I found it quite refreshing to find two chem companies putting their hands up and saying ' actually there may be other ways of growing cereals than what we have become accustomed to ' .
I would however agree with you that I would not plant them timing wise at the expense of a good crop of rape , hence ours went in on the second week of Sept and on walking through them they look to be doing every thing I want of them , they are thin enough to encourage a good weed chit and growing well enough to be drying the ground out well
I would however agree with you that I would not plant them timing wise at the expense of a good crop of rape , hence ours went in on the second week of Sept and on walking through them they look to be doing every thing I want of them , they are thin enough to encourage a good weed chit and growing well enough to be drying the ground out well
Feldspar
Member
- Location
- Essex, Cambs and Suffolk
Yes, I was thinking about the idea of making kit carry on a bit longer. If the kit is still quite new then it will still lose value sitting in the yard. If it's very new then the initial manufacturers warranty will be running out etc. Also, although you're not employing anyone, you are then putting your own labour cost across fewer acres if you decide not to crop part of the farm. The grain stores and buildings that were built on the basis of near full cropping will still be there and will still need looking after even if they are half empty. On the bright side though, at least your wind turbine will carry on spinning whatever!
- Location
- Cambridgeshire UK
Mr Charisma
Member
- Location
- stratford on Avon
If anyone has any fallow/covery crop stuff round our way.....well you know the rest !! Mum said if you don`t ask...
Nope don't know
Same here.
All you guys down south that discovered a couple of years ago that Spring barley was a decent crop to grow with lower costs rather than all winter cropping have fairly fudged the market for us up here.
Barley contacts rare as hens teeth this year. Nobody needing to buy as sitting on big stocks from last year if not the one before that as well.
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warksfarmer
Member
More roots on the nice soils.
More covers on the crap soils for bps reasons.
A contract seed crop.
Linseed.
And maybe some grass as a new market.
Have no problem with fallow either but won't be doing the usual suspects of sbarley, sosr or swheat. Might even drop winter wheat completely and we've not grown wosr for 5 yrs anyway.
Spring oats will continue on the heavy land as a spring break that also gives me some straw, much cheaper to grow than wosr and much less hassle, w beans will not be replaced by spring though, just need to cheapen establishment (allows Kerb for bg control, another active) Lighter land has seen a little spring malting barley replaced by winter feed barley (down to the requirements of local markets than anything else) Spring barley after beet will continue, as it has proven over time to be successful in this slot, and profitable. Sugar beet will stay for the short term, lots of analysis going on re spuds, but no big changes this year, just a few tweaks.
Not a fan of fallow, but if its a wet spring there will be a bit.
Cover crops between winter barley and spuds will continue, less convinced between second wheat and spring oats, mainly due to later sowing and wetter spring soils, though less of an issue if sprayed and flailed. Seed for last years cover crops was about £4/ac, establishment about a tenner an acre, with 2lt glypho pre drill, that it would normally of had anyway. Say £15/ac including bagging seed, buggeration etc. Direct drilled on a morning pre combining. We do apply fym pre roots and pre 2nd wheat at about 12-14t/ac, but still feel that om could be higher. Certainly it helps prevent potato ridge cracking, as long as we can keep the physical OM in the ridge.
Not a fan of fallow, but if its a wet spring there will be a bit.
Cover crops between winter barley and spuds will continue, less convinced between second wheat and spring oats, mainly due to later sowing and wetter spring soils, though less of an issue if sprayed and flailed. Seed for last years cover crops was about £4/ac, establishment about a tenner an acre, with 2lt glypho pre drill, that it would normally of had anyway. Say £15/ac including bagging seed, buggeration etc. Direct drilled on a morning pre combining. We do apply fym pre roots and pre 2nd wheat at about 12-14t/ac, but still feel that om could be higher. Certainly it helps prevent potato ridge cracking, as long as we can keep the physical OM in the ridge.
http://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/not-looking-for-metal-detecting.15526/
Its almost as legendary as "How to move a dead horse".