wages question.

[farmaholic]

How many more acres would the operation have to farm to pay a "good" man what he's worth year round.

Economies of scale eh? How many acres per combine, drill, sprayer, man. Even big acreages are becoming multi family member operations(brothers, fathers, sons, uncles, cousins, sisters, mothers, daughters, aunts) Seems to be the trend.

[freewheat]

I pay my fall helper with feed grain for his hogs. He gets about 6 bushels of feed barley or 4 bushels of feed wheat an hour. He gets "free" feed, I get his aid for a few weeks. Works great for us.

[blackpowder]

Like I said. An ad to satisfy requirement to get foreign. Thanx guys, what I thought.

[Koldkanuck]

A while back, there was a BTO here that paid $16/hour for tractor operators, etc during seeding. The average rate at that time was about $8.00 per hour., so he was paying about double the average rate. All the good local farm hands went and quit their jobs and went to work for this guy. Easy work, all new leas d equip.,even had a few new leased 4WD pulling 50 feet of harrow packer bar. Well in about 18 days, 3/4 of those guys get called into the office and are told thank you guys, your laid off , seeding is mostly done and we can handle it from here.. What the hell some of theses guys said....we quit another farmer that we worked for, for 7-8 years, and he already got someone else hired...now what. This year, there are a lot of oilfield workers looking for work on farms this spring, and a lot of them are good old farm boys to begin with. Good luck this spring guys.

[fjlip]

How many more acres would the operation have to farm to pay a "good" man what he's worth year round.

Economies of scale eh? How many acres per combine, drill, sprayer, man. Even big acreages are becoming multi family member operations(brothers, fathers, sons, uncles, cousins, sisters, mothers, daughters, aunts) Seems to be the trend.

48 weeks X 40 X $30=57600, if you net $100/ acre, you need 576 acres.
Times more men = times 576 ???
Seriously that would NOT pay!

[freewheat]

48 weeks X 40 X $30=57600, if you net $100/ acre, you need 576 acres.
Times more men = times 576 ???
Seriously that would NOT pay!

And if you net negative numbers, I guess they have to pay you! Or give you some more land to farm, so you can make it up on volume...

[fjlip]

And if you net negative numbers, I guess they have to pay you! Or give you some more land to farm, so you can make it up on volume...

That is what it appears a lot of huge operations are trying, law of diminishing returns cut in.
There is a RIGHT size for every one of our individual abilities/situations.
I share half the profit/loss with partner, the WIFE!
Now that is not cheep labor.

[farmaholic]

Can you fire her if she screws up? Maybe she's the boss and your the hired hand. As long as everyone knows the pecking order things will run smoothly.