The economics of autosteer

[Clive]

Following on from debate on another thread about the merits of tractor GPS autosteer what do users reckon the payback on investment in autosteer is ?


Pretty easy to quantify I guess working out the saved time, fuel, labour and various other inputs savings over the overlapped area is pretty straight forward ?

 

[John 1594]

as has been said on this forum by people involved and selling it, sub-500 acre and the initial investment far outweighs the savings, especially when your talking 15k for a rtk base?

 

[Clive]

as has been said on this forum by people involved and selling it, sub-500 acre and the initial investment far outweighs the savings, especially when your talking 15k for a rtk base?

Base sation Rtk is the rolls Royce service though - sf2 or hp2 etc or even network rtk are all subscription at about £1000pa so quite affordable for many

You can get steering for about 5k investment I think plus a signal sub ?? But a top of range system on rtk is closer 15k

5k doesn't buy much fert, spray or fuel these days ?

 

[John 1594]

providing your tractor equipped to recieve it, ie steering valve? Led to believe that the steering wheel mounted systems are not accurate or sensetive enough to achieve mm accuracy? May be wrong on that, but can see the theory behind it

 

[Clive]

providing your tractor equipped to recieve it, ie steering valve? Led to believe that the steering wheel mounted systems are not accurate or sensetive enough to achieve mm accuracy? May be wrong on that, but can see the theory behind it

I always thought steering wheel systems were a bit poor but we borrowed a topcon wheel for a hire tractor last autumn and it was very good, little different to the valve system on our other tractor at the time

 

[Shutesy]

Steering wheel systems can be used on rtk systems if necessary, probably more often than not those on RTK have spent a bit more on tractor with built in steering valve. IMO the majority farms of 100 acres + could justify a GPS kit, its just the time it takes to recoup the savings are a lot quicker on 4000 acres than 400 so costs have to be spread over a greater number of years. Hopefully it will begin to get cheaper to the point which farmers who initally didnt want to invest due to price and smaller acreages can then benefit from what it brings to modern agriculture. It is part of the future of UK farming its just a matter of time till the majority of farmers use some form of GPS and autosteer.

 

[Elmsted]

I really did not appreciate what a kinda throw away post tongue in cheek could and has created. We use topcon and trimble to help us make operations. We have auto steer from trimble. We do not use it it came bolted in to the cab. Frankly in our situation Trimble is a waste of time. As it appears to us to effectively require a defined outside of a field and merely repeats what it did last time. Which is not what we want. Also in our situation 20 to 30% of fields change yearly.
We use Topcon from a mapping perspective. With their hand held meter to establish the GPS points on fields and from that via other software get areas.
A very simple trimble gives us the turn in points via a light bar and screen system to apply fertiliser and sprays. Accurate enough given a double overlap fertiliser spreader and spray nozzles at 50 cm spacing on 110 degrees. For planting things find that markers on 8 metres vaddy are not rocket science to follow with a marker in the middle of the bonnet. Nor is it rocket science to do the same with a 24 row at 70 cm row spacing maize drill. Certainly Michael makes better quality markers than Vaddy. Which need a bit of occasional application of liquid metal.
Meanwhile I note that we as a team earn more than twice the average national wage. And we all have a laugh in the car park when someone has upgraded in the team. And are all passionate to get the operations done and the right time. We share a caravan in the field to do the work. Though Sergio's socks stink.
We reckon that anything less than 80 hectares ( 200 acres) a day is not good. We all enjoy the noise of x hundred HP when it is running.( Boys and their toys) And would not countenance in any way a computer trying to drive our on land challengers pulling 10 furrow ploughs. We do not regard it as work, it is a passion. Sure we will eventually be wheeled away with our measuring jugs to check sprayer calibration. Maybe used as incontinence jugs. Or our plastic trays for checking fertiliser spread patterns as receptacles for the thrown out upgrades to computers. But heck it will have been fun.

I did it back in the day city & guilds 015 and 030. But when I read that this proposed and used level of technology is going to be the saviour of western European agriculture and that drill over overlaps are better by a coupla centimetres or that fuel consumption moves from 3.2 to 2.7 the instinctive reaction is that there is something fundamentally wrong with the business. As if that makes a significant difference to the bottom line. It is fundamentally flawed as an enterprise. Crikey surely one has to be looking at double digit return on working capital.
Whether I am here or over your way we sell to same buyers. At roughly same price. Technology does not add value like turning wheat in to flour. It should be used to reduce cost per tonne sold.

Just my take on it and that ain't worth more than you paid for it.

 

[John 1594]

Steering wheel systems can be used on rtk systems if necessary, probably more often than not those on RTK have spent a bit more on tractor with built in steering valve. IMO the majority farms of 100 acres + could justify a GPS kit, its just the time it takes to recoup the savings are a lot quicker on 4000 acres than 400 so costs have to be spread over a greater number of years. Hopefully it will begin to get cheaper to the point which farmers who initally didnt want to invest due to price and smaller acreages can then benefit from what it brings to modern agriculture. It is part of the future of UK farming its just a matter of time till the majority of farmers use some form of GPS and autosteer.

think is, if your a small farmer of say 400 acres who invests a lot of capital into autosteer, by the time its paid for itself the technology will be old hat and everyone will have moved on to the next generation of it

costs of upgrading recievers and making sure each new tractor is able to accept your old system are all costs the gps boys never tell you about.

You could end up getting lumbered with an old system that is no use and cant even pick up a signal anymore if you wasnt careful surely?

Technology moves on as they say

 

[tillboy]

If you increase coverage of the cultivator/drill by 10% i.e. you dont have massive overlaps, and each run is consistent to the last there are savings to be made.

A 10% decrease in overlaps with inputs costing say £250/ha, (diesel, labour, seed, spray etc) would be £25/ha saving.
My current RTK based set up on three tractors, sprayer, combine and base station over 5 years costs £13/ha.
I personally think it pays for itself.

 

[Robt]

John, for someone that's never bought GPS you seem to be an expert on what the "GPS Boyd say"!!!!!!
Where do you get your experience from? Just curious

 

[Elmsted]

If you increase coverage of the cultivator/drill by 10% i.e. you dont have massive overlaps, and each run is consistent to the last there are savings to be made.

A 10% decrease in overlaps with inputs costing say £250/ha, (diesel, labour, seed, spray etc) would be £25/ha saving.
My current RTK based set up on three tractors, sprayer, combine and base station over 5 years costs £13/ha.
I personally think it pays for itself.

If overlapping by 10% on an 8 metre planter that= 80 cm I reckon. So with 24 metre sprayer = 80 x 3 =2.4 metres. If a driver was that inacurate then he/she has surely not a long term future. Take on board your costs of £13 per hectare over a five year time scale. But reality you pay up front in cashflow terms. That is 13x5 = £65 per hectare or half a tonne per hectare of wheat. £6.50 per tonne on ten tonne hectare yeild of wheat. That is exactly the cost of unloading a boat load..

 

[John 1594]

John, for someone that's never bought GPS you seem to be an expert on what the "GPS Boyd say"!!!!!!
Where do you get your experience from? Just curious

what ive read on this forum mostly, am i correct in what i say regards costs and ugrading software?

 

[John]

I farm 400ac and 350 for next door and run rtk on topcon, it's fitted to the 765 then have the steering wheel for sprayer and fert tractor (fastrac) and combine. Haven't done any costings but know its saving money as some over the bigger fields have lost a tramline and have no running around with half widths of machines or triangles when working in lands. We have gone the full cycle from light bar to egnos to hp to rtk. Hp was good enough for drilling but we have to mole a lot so hopefully we will get twice as many moles now as we will know where the last ones were put in, plus it only cost £500 for the year instead of £110 p/m on hp.

 

[Store Man]

Tillboy, I think it pays for itself too from the numbers you give:
Is the £13/ha cost first year only, all up front (ie 13x5=£65/ha) or paid each year?
I ask as it makes a difference on the payback numbers (which might not be the only reasons to purchase a system):

1. £13/ha first year only – payback 0.5 yrs, NPV £45,351
2. £13/ha annually - payback ~ 1.1 yrs, NPV £23,400
3. £65/ha upfront – payback ~ 2.6 yrs, NPV £20,589

(Used 500ha as example (dont know actual) based over 5 years, NPV based on discounted cash flow, 5% cost of cash)
All look good reasons to go for it.

 

[Store Man]

If overlapping by 10% on an 8 metre planter that= 80 cm I reckon. So with 24 metre sprayer = 80 x 3 =2.4 metres. If a driver was that inacurate then he/she has surely not a long term future.

That is really good point as any new technology needs to improve the current situation, so first job when looking at buying a system would be to look at current overlaps.

what do users reckon the payback on investment in autosteer is ?

From tillboy's numbers the breakeven point for investing in a system is where current overlaps are greater than 6%.

 

[John 1594]

So in my case then, 6% overlap on a 3m system is 18cm. Or 7" in proper money. If i couldnt drill to within 7" of the mark i wouldnt even bother getting the drill out the shed, id put it on with a fert spinner!

Drilling to the center id say im 2" either side of the mark on a bad day, and bang on it most. Of course, my perfectly flat, level fields give me an advantage, drilling beet to a marker between the front wheels id expect to be within an inch of the mark all the time

 

[Clive]

When I first looked at it over 10 years ago now I measured our average 24m tramline to be 23.5m so 0.5m overlap each time a sprayer or fert spreader ran down the tramline

at the time we had a 3m drill, so 8 passes between tramline runs meaning the driver was only about 5-6cm out each run on average

today our tramlines are exactly 24m

I's sure if you took that % error and multiplied it by ac farmed you would soon get a number that would not buy much seed, fert, spray and fuel ?

 

[dontknowanything]

I don't really buy the spray & seed cost savings talk. Most of our chemicals comes in 5-20L containers, and there's always a bit left over. Also overlap on diagonal field boundaries has the same effect. Same with seed in 1t bags. It's unlikely you will often make the difference between a container or a seed bag by going to GPS... If your farm is drilled by someone who knows that they are doing anyway.

I do believe it makes a big difference during cultivations [but fitting markers to cultivators could mitigate this].

I also believe it makes a massive difference for operator comfort & ability to use implements better.

We have RTK by the way, and would recommend it to anyone.

 

[Rural Rob]

I have just upgraded to RTK via sim card modem. As an early adopter of autosteer, I reckoned 5 year pay back, I managed it in 2 and a half years. I got the RTK for an electronic beet drill with auto shutoff etc. On one farm I drilled 92ha's. The seedbed preparation was by a new 6.2m carrier pulled by a Fendt 820. At a conservative guess I would imagine the only time it worked 6.2m was when it pulled into the field. Most of the time it was working 4.5 to 5m. So add another 15% to the 92ha's means he cultivated 106ha's. One unreported benefit would be , when you learn to trust it you start looking around at how you can improve performance i.e use all those monitors to optimise the fuel/ha, output etc. At my age autosteer has given me a new lease of life, I really don't think I could do what I do now without it. If I did I would just have to work more hours.

 

[Y Fan Wen]

The hardest positioning job I know of is spreading fertiliser on newly closed up grazing fields before a hay crop. At some point I always find myself driving over a previous track. I have tried towing a chain harrow to give a mark but that doesn't work in dry weather. Can't see the investment being economic for the bit I do tho'!
Spreading on aftermath isn't too handy either.