What's your break even cost for wheat?

[Pie face]

With prices continuing to tumble I'm not far off negative territory. I think it costs me £85 to grow a tonne of wheat but that excludes my labour which is tillage, drilling, fert spreading and carting.

 

[farmerm]

With prices continuing to tumble I'm not far off negative territory. I think it costs me £85 to grow a tonne of wheat but that excludes my labour which is tillage, drilling, fert spreading and carting.

are you including, insurance, storage, depreciation, hedge cutting, drainage, general mantainance, farm assurance...

 

[Pie face]

are you including, insurance, storage, depreciation, hedge cutting, drainage, general mantainance, farm assurance...

No just direct costs the other items I know get paid crop or no crop

 

[Brisel]

No just direct costs the other items I know get paid crop or no crop

These still need to be worked into your costs of production or you're just kidding yourself. Your true break even is ALL costs divided by your yield, preferably the 5 year average though retrospectively you can use one years if you want to scare yourself silly. You can weight certain crops more or less if you're doing more passes or have higher yields therefore more stare handling costs.

Mine was £138/t last time I did this exercise 2 years ago, net of rent, finance, machinery, labour, other overheads and some hidden costs e.g. game covers. I offset these using things like straw income, environmental stewardship payments, BPS etc. Long term average wheat yield here is 8.3. t/ha including good yielding years like 2015 and stinkers like 2012.

 

[wanton dwarf]

Why would you advertise on a public forum the minimum price you need ?

Do you see any other people in industry volunteering their cost prices ?

Do you see Grain merchants publicly showing how they do business ? AGCO ? Fertiliser suppliers ? Chemical merchants ?

Do you see Tesco, Waitrose, Lidl, Asda .. or indeed ANYONE advertising their costs ?


Do you seriously expect to be treated fairly in a business world where NOBODY else tells of their costs .. but you do ?

Perhaps you should reconsider your business strategy ..


I never tell anyone how much I yield, how much I have in the shed nor how much I buy materials at .. if a grain merchant asks me how the year has been .. not as good as I hoped ALWAYS.