spending money you don't got

[sawfly]

Its auction sale season,and my enviromental farm plan is ready to go.

100 places to spend money and i dont have any excess laying around.

situation
machinery& building debt about 20% of value
operating debt at sept 07 would be about 40-50% of 07 input costs.
land debt or equity 50%

this means borrowing, and my want or need list is twice as big as my credit or willingness to take on more debt.

heres the short list

1. 20,000 bush. more bin space
(even after selling a fair bit for sept delivery) possible cost 20-32,000 or dump on ground and tarp cost 1,000 or ?

2 a straight cut header upgrade, to help harvest 800 acres of peas.

i have one old small flex header and ridgid 30ft.s w pu reels. if the peas are flat on the ground i could be hooped. 22ft.on 800 acres .

possible fixes 25 or 30 ft.flex head cost 6-15,000 $
macdon or honeybee 15-40,000

3 NH3 tank for airdrill, we rent now for about $2000/yr. likley cost at auction $10,000 . 5-6 year payback. (prob put on hold)

4. upgrade sp swather. cost 25-60,000$ have an 83 model 30ft. (this is one i will shelf for this year) between it and a 30ft. pulltype it should cut 1200 canola. 160 barley

5 take advantage of enviromental farm plan funding. requires spending money. already have openers midrows etc. some possible choices are -

fert. bins 15-45,000 (would be nice but a lot of money for little storage)

gps auto steer ,auto boom on off ,etc. 8-13000$
reasonably good payback potential if everything works well. esp. the auto boom on off 1-2 yr.

bin temp sensors, for most of the bins 12,000$ pay back as little as 1-5 yr. if it qualifies ?

am i nuts not maximizeing the EFP program?

6. an old 3 ton truck so the second airseeder (witch seeds about 1200 acres ) can have 2 trucks of its own. cost 5000$ ( iffy catagory)

7. upgrade one of 2 9,000 hour (still works)yard/loader /auger / vac/rockpicker/ tractor.s

cost for 4400 hr. unit 10-12,000$

8 other possible upgrades include.
1. old pup replace with semi & grain trailer. (run tandems now)

2 .heavey harrow
3. bigger water trailer for spraying
1200 to 2-4,000 gal.

there is all kinds of things to consider and a million options.
do you have rules of thumb for going into debt for improvements.

if i cut the list i half im down to 60,000, 1 or 2 things is 30,000 and 10,000 seems like lots. am i chicken or smart?

[countryguy]

I feel your pain sawfly.Cash around here is tight from poor crops in many of the last ten years.

With that being said,myself,I would only invest in things that you absolutely cannot do without,or items that will actually make money for the farm fairly quick.Otherwise I don't think it's a very good business decision to increase debt load just to get the little piece of the government pie,which is taxable anyway.

On another note I believe with the gov't being so green these days that the efp program will be extended into the future giving farmers more time to make use of it.

Good Luck.

[countryguy]

I hear you Sawfly, just curious as to what your age is?? Because being under thirty your position is better than mine.

[bgmb]

The rule we try to follow on our farm is to spend $20/acre per year on machinery. And your total machinery investment should be $150-250/acre (depending on soil zone) including the value of leased machines and assuming you don't get any custom work. but i would seriously look at getting some custom work or renting a swather for a couple of days.

[sawfly]

we run about 150$/ acre for machinery. dk. brown zone.
as for age closer to 50, had a divorce set me back about 10- 15 years.

good thing i like farming, because i wont be retireing on land equity.

[Ron]

Run approx 200/ac on mostly rented land, buying land just wont work for me (ROI), the enviormental farm plan looks great for offsetting costs on your wish list, stuff you want/need because it will save you money (my wife laughs her ass off whenever I say "buying this will make us money", not sure why? LOL).
My list includes technotill packers, GPS autosteer, rate controller for NH3, maybe fert bins for this fall (the bins are reaching though).
I think you have defined the farmers favorite hobby with your topic name, here all these year I have been telling everybody it is curling.