Is BIG really more effecient?

[cowman]

I've often wondered if being really big is really more efficient. Nowadays the big grain farmer doesn't have time to seed that "difficult" spot. In times past the farmer would seed it to hay and cut it for feed. Three or four acres isn't worth the effort anymore, so it just becomes a jungle. Or maybe a long runway would be fenced and a couple of steers put in it. After the farmer harvested his grain he would turn a few cows in to clean up the fencerows and waterways. Now it seems to be farm the whole thing and if the sprayer zaps the runways, who cares.
It just seems to me the old time farmer used more of the land.

[rookie]

Efficent is the slogan for the new age small guy like me . Every foot of space gets some use because where else will those acres come from. That big operator is sitting on it in my area. And with the price of land... you get the idea. So some of those practices are still alive and well . For me it might mean not having to pick up a few weeks extra cash working in the patch . Still however thats what it has come too these days and for who knows how many to come. Any way , stay cool, hot one today ..........

[lornej]

Rookie ?? Is that you Gavin ??

[kam]

Big isn't necessarily more efficient; but it does give you more room for error. I work 4,000 acres with a neighbor, and I would say about thirty percent of my time is spent running in circles. A lack of communication is our biggest downfall. One guy is seldom on the same page as the next. But, when you're managing this many acres, you don't really have time to worry about whether or not that low spot gets planted, or if that ravine gets washed out again. You just go. Everything's a rush, and often times the smaller details are forgotten. A perfect example: the guy planting sugarbeets this spring didn't take the time to check the records on a field. Turns out, it was sprayed with Pursuit herbicide three years ago, and the beets were killed from the carryover. But with nine hundred acres of beets, those thirty acres weren't going to break us, we just planted it to soybeans. So I'd have to say that bigger usually means less efficient.

[cakadu]

Kam, your account lends a personal touch to the fact that the bigger you get, the less efficiently you use your inputs. I would think that time and communication would fall into the category of inputs, but that is just me.

I recall recently reading a statement to the effect of "if you can't make a living off 2000 acres, then you won't do it off of 4,000 acres either." Don't know if it was in one of the threads here at agri-ville or in something else that I read.

I'm not sure that statement is entirely true, especially if one is trying different things and spreading out the risk on crops. What do you think?