(edited)General
What is the most bushels you can raise per acre and still lose money?
What is the most bushels you can raise per acre and still lose money?
Just finished harvesting 120 acre field of wheat that went over 160 bushels an acre. It’s for seed and we have a good basis so I was able to sell it for $5.9 per bushel. I still lost money. Anyone else have any stories like?
here are the details
Revenue
$5.9x160=$944
Rent $500
Irrigation expense $150
Fertilizer $150
Seed $20
Chemicals $55
Equipment/field work $65
Harvest $75
Net loss per acre -$71
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55 in chemical? I am spending 15 and that’s with 2 rounds of fungicide. What are you spraying?
Here in western ND I've heard rents fluctuate according to crops. 50 per acre for small grains 1400 for potatoes. maybe you could do something like that where you pay a more fair price for the crop you are raising
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$15,000 per acre if you can find any to buy.
I'm just curious if rent is $500 per acre what does land sell for?
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I have a land lord that farm in Oregon. Says he can raise 200 bushel wheat and it doesn’t pay. He mostly raises flowers and vegetables. I think he said 1300 acre farm with around 30 employees. It is a different world out there. He had never seen his families 80 acres so he stopped by to look at it. He was as amazed how much stubble was standing in fallow ground as I was about his farm. That...
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I'm fortunate to be farming in pretty much the best place on earth. I enjoy discussions like this and it's great to hear about 160 bushel wheat and 300 bushel corn. This year I'll be covering more than 4 times the acres for that amount of wheat, making a small profit and being set up for something better next year.
Be positive about your farm; brag your heart out. If the grass truly is greener som...
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I'm not afraid to raise a small grain that just breaks even if it means I can grow some N and get a yield bump on the following crop. I've seen lots of studies that say you get a 10-20% yield bump on corn after wheat and a bump on beans, not counting fertilizer savings or improved soil health if you grow some N, something to graze, or other cover crop. Marketing the wheat can be the issue in my ar...
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I’m pretty interested. I wanna see more pictures and wanna know more about the different crops you guys can raise. I assume you’re somewhere on the Palouse ?
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Ill post some pictures later today of some different crops. We are actually in the Columbia basin. It is about 100 miles from the Palouse. We are much flatter and only get 6 inches of rain a year.
It sounds like growing wheat and losing some money is just the cost of doing business, if your making that kind of money the next year then wheat loss is just part of the variable cost of growing what ever makes you $700-$4000.
If you want to make $30 a acre on wheat and give up the other revenue move to North Dakota.
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I should also add that with these high profit potential crops there’s also the potential to lose a lot of money. We used to raise onion seed and we could make $4-5000 profit on a good year but we had too many years where it blew away and we got nothing and it took us two years and a couple thousand dollars an acre to raise it. If you add up the good years and bad years it ends up being about the...
This is my neighbors field of sugar beet seed. He will probably make a profit of around $1500 per acre this year on this crop (it looks good) but probably made nothing last year or lost money to set up for this crop.
That is exactly right. I didn’t post this to brag or complain, it is what it is and I thought some people might find it interesting. I also was wondering if anybody else will raise a crop they know will lose money, and be OK with it because it justifies some other crop.
Definitely need to drop that rent. I’ve never seen $500/acre.
So were you asking for our opinions or doing this to ****? Feels kinda like a brag
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I think everyone in your area needs to rethink what they pay for rent. I don’t feel this is just in your area tho. I see a lot of guys paying high rent and turning little to no profit. Why work so hard for nothing? It’s all for their ego. While talking with local loan officers, they state a lot of guys are barely hanging on and about to lose everything. They can’t get them to back off the spendin...
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In our area, it makes economic sense. We can make $700-$1500 profit per acre on the other crops we raise so we raise some rotational crops to facilitate that. Guys that raise potatoes and onions can make a profit of $2000-$4000 an acre and a good year.
Don’t you loose the nutrients by burning off the field also?
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No. You loose some but not nearly as much. Mostly talking about the p&k. I should say this is not my math but it is from my neighbor that is now a farmer but was first a physics professor for 20 years. I trust his math and research as much as anyone’s.
Could you have baled the straw and sold them for a profit?
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A lot of guys do but we don’t because if you do the math we end up losing more nutrients that way then it is worth. Also, we burn the field so we can plant bluegrass and we want as much straw in the field as possible so it burns hot and kills any seed left behind. We knew we were not going to make money raising wheat. We just do it to set up to plant something else.
I'd say if your paying $500 per acre rent the problem is looking at you in the mirror every morning.
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We only get 1 crop a year. On average we can only plant 103 day corn. It allows us to plant crops that have to over winter to produce seed.
Sorry, do you get more than one crop/year, or does what allow for fall seeding.
Then everyone in my area has the same problem because that is pretty standard around here but we also generally have the highest production averages of anywhere in the country. To put it in perspective 160 bushel wheat and 300 bushel corn are the normal around here. The real money though is in vegetable crops. We only raise grain for rotation.
I farm irrigation ground near Walla Walla Wa. and I've never heard of $500 rent! Ours is about $200 maybe up to $300 under a pivot.
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Here rent is anywhere from $400 for ground that can’t raise potatoes to $900 for potato or onion ground. The only reason anyone raises wheat here is to set up to raise a profitable crop the next year.
switch the fertilizer from traditional to Agzyme liquid. It will save you money and boost your yields. This fertliizer has boosted my corm 20%.
Rent is $500 per acre? Good lord. I’d say that’s a big part of the problem
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Why would anyone pay that kind of rent?
Holy shit
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