The Economics of No-till

[Feldspar]

Just buy a Mars bar in Tesco and you're a customer. Sorted.

Last time I decided to buy some fuel from them so I felt less guilty. Then had all the injectors go in my car. No idea if fuel was dodgy, but this time I'll feel quite justified in not buying anything.

 

[SimonD]

Last time I decided to buy some fuel from them so I felt less guilty. Then had all the injectors go in my car. No idea if fuel was dodgy, but this time I'll feel quite justified in not buying anything.

I won't be filling up from there then!

 

[Feldspar]

It's all very well us zealots bigging up no-till for whatever reason, saving the planet, flood prevention, healthy soils, cost saving or what else floats your boat, but if we're losing money then we're not going to encourage many 'conventional' farmers to give it a go. So Groundswell have teamed up with Procam (through Richard Harding) and Churchgates Land Family Business (ie Gary Markham) to create a benchmarking template to compare what no-tillers are achieving financially against Churchgates' existing client base.

Gary will be launching the project at the Procam autumn CA conference next Thursday in Baldock. Initially we are looking to create a group of 12 farmers to furnish Gary with selected details from their accounts, which he will pool together to give an average to use for benchmarking. The plan is that the group will meet quarterly on a members farm and share ideas and information with each other, so we'll get something back for our input...

The preliminary results that Gary has come up are quite surprising. It's going to be an interesting Conference, book your tickets now!

Just booked my ticket. Not sure if I can make the whole day, but would have paid the ticket price just to listen to what Gary has to say. Right up my street.

I think there needs to be a lot of very careful thought in order to make this benchmarking work well. To take your farm as an example, are you going to separate out your livestock and arable costs, or is the overall system going to be assessed as a whole? What is the criteria for admission to the group and how will figures for each farm be categorised (if at all)? Will you separate those with livestock and those without? How will you strip out diversified income from the accounts? For example, we have property costs to do with let properties often invisibly blended into our fixed costs. This makes the fixed costs seem higher than they actually are. In your case, if you use a telehandler in part for work on residential property, how will its cost to the overall business be apportioned? What about if a farm is transitioning to no-till and has not shed all of the machinery from its previous system (you have only just sold your Kockerling from the last system however many years ago. Jake Freestone has still kept his Vaderstad Top Down etc.), how will the fixed costs be judged? What of a farm who does some no-tilling and some cultivation, are they allowed to join, or is a only those who are purely no-tilling? How will accounts prepared by other accountants (i.e. not Churchgates) be processed in order that apples are compared with apples? Often fixed costs are broken down in quite different ways (for example, fuel is often put in variable costs, whereas Churchgates generally put it in fixed). What do you do if one business uses different depreciation rates in their management accounts? Over how many years will the figures be taken for so as to avoid lumpy changes to fixed costs (i.e. when, for example, we swap our tractor fleet and the machinery costs shoot up in a jumpy fashion)? Will there be a distinction between farms who are purposefully going for a super low input and lower output against those who are trying to maintain output or even get higher yields?

 

[Dockers]

Blimey, I need to have a lie down after that ! Consider my snobbishness !!

 

[Brisel]

Just booked my ticket. Not sure if I can make the whole day, but would have paid the ticket price just to listen to what Gary has to say. Right up my street.

I think there needs to be a lot of very careful thought in order to make this benchmarking work well. To take your farm as an example, are you going to separate out your livestock and arable costs, or is the overall system going to be assessed as a whole? What is the criteria for admission to the group and how will figures for each farm be categorised (if at all)? Will you separate those with livestock and those without? How will you strip out diversified income from the accounts? For example, we have property costs to do with let properties often invisibly blended into our fixed costs. This makes the fixed costs seem higher than they actually are. In your case, if you use a telehandler in part for work on residential property, how will its cost to the overall business be apportioned? What about if a farm is transitioning to no-till and has not shed all of the machinery from its previous system (you have only just sold your Kockerling from the last system however many years ago. Jake Freestone has still kept his Vaderstad Top Down etc.), how will the fixed costs be judged? What of a farm who does some no-tilling and some cultivation, are they allowed to join, or is a only those who are purely no-tilling? How will accounts prepared by other accountants (i.e. not Churchgates) be processed in order that apples are compared with apples? Often fixed costs are broken down in quite different ways (for example, fuel is often put in variable costs, whereas Churchgates generally put it in fixed). What do you do if one business uses different depreciation rates in their management accounts? Over how many years will the figures be taken for so as to avoid lumpy changes to fixed costs (i.e. when, for example, we swap our tractor fleet and the machinery costs shoot up in a jumpy fashion)? Will there be a distinction between farms who are purposefully going for a super low input and lower output against those who are trying to maintain output or even get higher yields?

How big would Gary's group be? I think if you knew a fair few of them you'd be able to get an idea of what you are compared against. Benchmarking is not aboout finding identical businesses to your own - that is impossible. It is about comparing roughly similar businesses then considering where you differ. Pat yourself on the back for the good bits & examine why you're dearer on others. It's not a competition, just a guide and a discussion point. I think you'll get more from the on farm meetings than a set of figures saying you're £x/ha better here but £y/ha worse there.

Depending on how many participate in this, why not suggest that you have a big table of everyone's figures, business by business? Just remove the names at the top to save embarrasment. That's what AHDB did for my local Crop Bench group.

 

[martian]

Just booked my ticket. Not sure if I can make the whole day, but would have paid the ticket price just to listen to what Gary has to say. Right up my street.

I think there needs to be a lot of very careful thought in order to make this benchmarking work well. To take your farm as an example, are you going to separate out your livestock and arable costs, or is the overall system going to be assessed as a whole? What is the criteria for admission to the group and how will figures for each farm be categorised (if at all)? Will you separate those with livestock and those without? How will you strip out diversified income from the accounts? For example, we have property costs to do with let properties often invisibly blended into our fixed costs. This makes the fixed costs seem higher than they actually are. In your case, if you use a telehandler in part for work on residential property, how will its cost to the overall business be apportioned? What about if a farm is transitioning to no-till and has not shed all of the machinery from its previous system (you have only just sold your Kockerling from the last system however many years ago. Jake Freestone has still kept his Vaderstad Top Down etc.), how will the fixed costs be judged? What of a farm who does some no-tilling and some cultivation, are they allowed to join, or is a only those who are purely no-tilling? How will accounts prepared by other accountants (i.e. not Churchgates) be processed in order that apples are compared with apples? Often fixed costs are broken down in quite different ways (for example, fuel is often put in variable costs, whereas Churchgates generally put it in fixed). What do you do if one business uses different depreciation rates in their management accounts? Over how many years will the figures be taken for so as to avoid lumpy changes to fixed costs (i.e. when, for example, we swap our tractor fleet and the machinery costs shoot up in a jumpy fashion)? Will there be a distinction between farms who are purposefully going for a super low input and lower output against those who are trying to maintain output or even get higher yields?

Luckily, a lot of careful thought has gone into this (and not from me, my eyes tend to glaze over when presented with pages covered with figures), so that we can extract the crucial cost and output totals to get to the nub of the issue. Every farm is obviously different and no-till is something of a novelty in the UK, continuous no-till in particular, but if we get enough of a cohort together, we should give a flavour of what is possible. Probably best come and hear what Gary has to say.

 

[Feldspar]

Luckily, a lot of careful thought has gone into this (and not from me, my eyes tend to glaze over when presented with pages covered with figures), so that we can extract the crucial cost and output totals to get to the nub of the issue. Every farm is obviously different and no-till is something of a novelty in the UK, continuous no-till in particular, but if we get enough of a cohort together, we should give a flavour of what is possible. Probably best come and hear what Gary has to say.

Spoke to Richard this afternoon about it all again. Coming on Thursday so will wait to hear what Gary has to say.

 

[RTK Farmer]

Where's the best place to park as the Arts centre car park looks to have capacity for half a dozen cars only?

Car park top of Simpsons Drive almost opersite, £1.50 all day, Parking on the square is restricted to 2 hrs.

 

[SimonD]

Did the power point presentation from day 1 go out to the delegates in the end? I didn’t want to chase it up but I haven’t received anything yet.

 

[martian]

Yes. I got them on the 17th nov. But they evaporated before I got round to downloading them, so I can't help. I'll ask Richard if he can send them to you Simon.