Trying to work out fair figures

[wanton dwarf]

I think you find in reality it’s not £160,000. More like £60,000 as very few potato growers sell through their own farm shops where you’d perhaps get £5/bag. Majority are on fixed price contracts with the likes of McCain’s and Walkers.

Yeah, I wouldn't like to handle sales to 32,100 people a year either.

If you worked 365 days a year 7 days a week, thats 90 people a day.

 

[woodylane]

Yeah, I was gonna post the stuff below. Purely guess work.


13 hectares of potatoes is going to fill lots of trucks. I don't grow potatoes but I do know the yield is something like 10 tonnes per acre. So that's 13 x 2.47 x 10 = 321 tonnes of potatoes. Or about 11 artic loads.

321,000kg, £5 a bag of 10kg = £160,000 (Sold at the road side to the passing 32,100 cars)

Might get a few second hand tractors for that and maybe some second have machinery.

10t/acre is about right for earlies 20t acre for main crop. Fertiliser alone for main crop will be around the £900-£1000/ha, seeds up to around £500 so you could be looking at around £2750/acre growing costs possibly more when you factor in diesel rise and machinery.

 

[warksfarmer]

10t/acre is about right for earlies 20t acre for main crop. Fertiliser alone for main crop will be around the £900-£1000/ha, seeds up to around £500 so you could be looking at around £2750/acre growing costs possibly more when you factor in diesel rise and machinery.

It used to be £1500/ac when we were in it. Then about 5 years ago I was told by a friend who grows at scale it was £2000/ac so now I wouldn’t be surprised if your figure was about right to be honest. Scary if your in it for 1000ac

 

[woodylane]

It used to be £1500/ac when we were in it. Then about 5 years ago I was told by a friend who grows at scale it was £2000/ac so now I wouldn’t be surprised if your figure was about right to be honest. Scary if your in it for 1000ac

It’s not far out as I was working out fertiliser costs last week so I know they’re double plus 10% of last year, seed up, chem roughly the same maybe another £200/ha if you’ve gone onto nemathorin from viadate. Actually the more I think of it, it’s a scary amount.

 

[Rod Dumbreck]

13 ha would be roughly 650t

If I could do those imogees.... the red face one

 

[farmerm]

Something else to factor in... you cant look at potatoes alone, potatoes need to be grown within a wider rotation of other crops. The average profit and average fertilizer use over the cropping cycle is a very different figure to that of the potatoes alone. Potatoes are a hungry crop but they also leave considerable nutrients which are utilized by the crop that follows them

Plant trees on the land and short term you loose its BPS annual income, though that is of course phasing out over the next 7 years... You loose pretty much any prospect of any future annual income from that land. You devalue the asset, if land is capable of growing potatoes that could mean a cut in value from £14,000/ac to £4000/ac or less for woodland.

Grassed down and low intensity livestock grazing on high quality potato growing soils.. without BPS that is almost certainly going to give a negative return...