high input farmers

[FarmJunkie]

These guys grow big crops consistently so more water use leaves less for the next year. IE this year and when u start with less h2o u get less. Over the long haul more bushels but more risk. To each his own.

[bucket]

I dont know what the contracting numbers are. They seem hidden to this industry, but I do not consider marketing and contracting to be production risk.

We have some large neighbors, I will leave them unnamed, that are into integrated businesses now. That means they farm land, own land, do custom work, rent land, rent out land, buy and sell inputs, finance smaller guys, even buying and selling crop and then they wheal and deal with non traditional lenders and partners that most of us would never consider working with.

These are the kinds of players in this industry now and they have taken on exponential risk.

And at the end of the day they too will get a government handout....to keep their investors happy (who probably have more pull with government than the 1000 to 5000 acre farmer.)

[bucket]

Fertilizer ain't a good investment this year !

At least the chemical keeps her clean !

Both are too high priced !

Oh I forgot to mention canola seed !

What a scam !

Not to sure about the chemical...some fields that got sprayed have weeds poking through everyday...while the unsprayed one are obvious , in a week or two you may not be able to tell the difference.

[Old Cowzilla]

Weeds in the sprayer tracts starting to show in some spots. Just love spraying in the dust !!!! My bean field along the hi-way looks the worst ( of course ).

[jamesb]

In my parts timing was / is everything. Normally the early bird gets the worm but in many cases this year the very early seed crop just didn't have enough moisture to make it until some of the late may and early June rains for what they were. Most pro tilled spots didn't come up for lack of moisture. I see land that got just one more shower of a few tenths at a key time looking so much better than land just a couple miles away. I am expecting to see lots of left over nutrients in our fall soil tests, as I don't want to spend any more than necessary with the way fert prices will be next spring. We have taken to soil testing every field every year now for quite a few years and I am always surprised as too the variances in what is left in the fall. On some of our land that we fertilize for 45 bpa canola and it goes half of that this fall, I expect will have lots of left over nitrogen. We were pretty dry last year and those fields that missed rains left lots of unused nutrients.

[blackpowder]

It is our job to make nature the lowest stave in the barrel.
Proper hands on c/w a proper balanced ration. I feel but can't prove a few things. Like maintaining a higher P K level shows. It all shows when stressed.
Granted, it is not a zero crop here, more like 60% maybe.
Soil tests very cheap considering. Still a lot of farmers who don't really want to know.
From experience I'll likely need 80+% of my normal N.

[Old Cowzilla]

Fert pellets still being dug up in my area . What rain we did get didn,t meet with the stuff banded that sat above the higher moisture zone. Maybe this years fert bill can get spread out for 2 years use ?

[bucket]

Fert pellets still being dug up in my area . What rain we did get didn,t meet with the stuff banded that sat above the higher moisture zone. Maybe this years fert bill can get spread out for 2 years use ?

Guys fertilize for 50bpa can't be needing much of a top up for fertilizer next year if they grow a 10bpa crop this year . Can they.

[the big wheel]

It will be interesting to see nutrient levels
I m worried they were dissolved but
Not moved into the lower soil area and maybe
Was lost in the wind and heat?
Side band maybe not as good as coulters?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Crop variety selection comes into play as well I believe. As an example semi-dwarf crops that respond well to higher fertility also demand more water and perform poorly in a drought. Various varieties of CPS wheat I find perform poorly when it is dry compared to CWRS varieties. With barley I find quite a difference as well. I grew Synergy, Austenson and Sirish. Sirish definitely doesn’t like the dryer weather.

I was going to start a thread on this very topic. I grew Sirish, synergy and a variety in between height wise last year. Synergy was flat from corner to corner, but survived under water and thrived in saturated soil, Sirish stood up really well, but was a disaster anywhere there was water stress.
This year I decided I would rather have flat crop then poor crop, so I grew all synergy.
Every once in a while I accidentally do something right this was definitely one of those times. The synergy barley looks very good.
In the early 2000s we started growing Thompson semi dwarf barley because it didn't Lodge very easily. It really really doesn't like hot and dry. There were some decent barley crops in the area of tall varieties, the Thompson headed out in June at a foot high and only yielded 50 bushels in 2002 and 2003 without any rain. After a few years of no rain gave up went back to tell varieties and it rained ever since.
I grow a really short CPS variety (actually CNHR now) and I think I am regretting that this year.

I second the motion that Invigor handles stress of any kind better than any of the RR varieties. I was beginning to think they had closed the gap, but this year the difference is very evident. Glad to have mostly invigor (and P501L) varieties this year.
I see the same issue as short cereals in the supposedly short season canolas on a dry year as well.

[WiltonRanch]

Had a fair rain after seeding was complete but not much after. Think fertilizer is trapped in the clay as usual. Next years fertilizer expenditure might be trimmed a fair amount. Thinking wheat and cereals maybe 60% normal but canola 25% to 33% of normal. Crop next year maybe 50% normal fertility cause unless we have enough rain there isn’t enough subsoil moisture to pull much of anything through.

[BreadWinner]

Maybe the high input farmers have deeper pockets? I can actually see that on the normal years they can hit it out of the park. I can see next year will have 2 types of farmers, ones that double down and ones that just plop in some seed and wait for the adjuster. I wonder which will come out on top?

[blackpowder]

I get what you're saying.
I'm applying fert next year also with an eye on moisture etc.
But here, the lion's share of expense is gone beforehand. You don't go broke buying fertilizer.

[jazz]

We did soil testing last yr and had enough built up fertility that we could have skipped a yr but we put down a full package anyway. Curious to know whats going to be there this fall.

I imagine the ag reps will be crowing about not drawing down your fertility bank account.

[WiltonRanch]

Probably the right thing to do is not really cut back next year on fertility. It’s only 1 dry year. Right?