Sustainable?

[Overby]

I'm not an arable man but keep an eye on hat's happening and am interested in the way the industry is headed.

A fella near us has been sowing spring barley after getting caught out in the back end and left with a few hundred unsown acres.

Most fields were disced twice, subsoiled, roterrad, sown, then rolled. That seems like a lot of passes and extra work when the industry is going the other way? A man was hired in to help do the work too, so the labour wasn't 'free'.

Not to mention the field is now white, the second load of fert now sitting on top of what hasn't blown away from the first lot a couple of weeks back. No rain so it's never dissolved.

Any opinions on how sustainable the above is? I'm intrigued as what I read as to current industry aims is directly opposite.

 

[SilliamWhale]

What do you mean by sustainable?

 

[Overby]

Sorry, financially, particularly with the enviro stuff coming in. Everyone I speak to is trying to minimise passes but this seems directly at odds.

 

[teslacoils]

Doubt it was the original plan. Doubt farmer expected the outcome. We're all trying to maximise profit.

 

[Against_the_grain]

Firstly thats not a lot of passes . Even so an extra pass with the discs maybe costs £20/Ha. Thats only about 0.15t/Ha of yield. If an extra pass means the difference between a poor and average crop its worth the cost. Not an ideal situation perhaps but what else is he supposed to do?Leave it? Not do an extra pass in case his neighbors think he is not sustainable?

 

[Brisel]

Ask again when he's harvested it and compare it against a locally direct drilled crop. Part of the dilemma with a DD system is any yield drop, which covers an awful lot of steel & fuel bills.

Let's say that he has spent £20/acre more than a DD establishment system. Today, October feed barley is £156/t. 20/156 is a 0.13 t/acre yield response required to cover the extra passes.

You have to be economically sustainable before you can be environmentally sustainable.

 

[DrWazzock]

Everybody slags off my powerharrow but one more time over a knobbly bit can make the difference between reasonable establishment or no establishment.
Why spoil the ship for an ‘aporth of tar?

 

[T Hectares]

It’s probably more sustainable to spend £100k on a new direct drill, buy a new £150k tractor to pull it, equip it with a 2 t front weight and a stainless exhaust, rtk and VRA then not spend the time to learn the intricacies of no till and end up with a small heap of grain to sell this harvest and blame DD for being a load of sh*te that doesn’t work on his land ??

 

[DrWazzock]

Every technique is struggling this year. We’ve done the best we can with what we’ve got but we can’t change the weather.
Ironically my spring ploughed land that was conventionally cultivated “losing all the moisture” looks the best, having established uniformly. Autumn ploughed spring drilled land and spring direct drilled land is patchy to say the least.

 

[Spencer]

I'm not an arable man but keep an eye on hat's happening and am interested in the way the industry is headed.

A fella near us has been sowing spring barley after getting caught out in the back end and left with a few hundred unsown acres.

Most fields were disced twice, subsoiled, roterrad, sown, then rolled. That seems like a lot of passes and extra work when the industry is going the other way? A man was hired in to help do the work too, so the labour wasn't 'free'.

Not to mention the field is now white, the second load of fert now sitting on top of what hasn't blown away from the first lot a couple of weeks back. No rain so it's never dissolved.

Any opinions on how sustainable the above is? I'm intrigued as what I read as to current industry aims is directly opposite.

Surely thats the "fellas" worry if its sustainable..

What you "read"..???

Dangerous thing is a little information......

 

[Overby]

touched a nerve .

Plenty of extra detail leads to the interest.

 

[Spencer]

touched a nerve .

Not at all.. But everyone quick to Judge these days.., with little knowledge of what they're judging!

 

[DRC]

We all make decisions on the day without knowing what the weather will do next . Hindsight is a wonderful thing .
Pays to have a mix of crops to try and average it out . It was 8 here last year , not all by choice .

 

[spin cycle]

i hate the feckin word 'sustainable'....it means 'we are going to screw you over'

 

[Overby]

i hate the feckin word 'sustainable'....it means 'we are going to screw you over'

Perhaps a poor choice. I was in a rush.

 

[Overby]

This came from a chat with 2 local big co tractors talking about how things are changing, mini.al passes, cut fuel and man hours, minimise compaction etc to then seeing the opposite end of the spectrum happening in the same postcode. That's all.

 

[solo]

Farmers have to evolve with the changing field and weather conditions. This field may make a loss but others may make profit. The aim is to get the balance right in order to stay solvent.

 

[Overby]

Farmers have to evolve with the changing field and weather conditions. This field may make a loss but others may make profit. The aim is to get the balance right in order to stay solvent.

*fields. 100s of acres.

 

[DeeGee]

i hate the feckin word 'sustainable'....it means 'we are going to screw you over'

‘Sustainable’ is a buzz word in bureaucratic jargon.
It sits alongside such others as ‘service delivery’ ‘resilience’ and ‘service users’.

They all intertwine with a plethora of manifold wretched acronyms whenever a ‘report’ is delivered by civil service quangos and all those local government departmental ‘facilitators’.

 

[davidroberts30]

This came from a chat with 2 local big co tractors talking about how things are changing, mini.al passes, cut fuel and man hours, minimise compaction etc to then seeing the opposite end of the spectrum happening in the same postcode. That's all.

All depends on the soil type ,some need a lot of working down
And if the field is white that's probably lime