Seed treating equipment

[charliep]

I see a couple of references to Statistics Canada/lack of profitability. What survey are you referring to? If it is the farm financial survey, is this an accurate representation of farm profitability - particularly of medium to large farms who produce the vast majority of production? From the same survey, if farms are unprofitable, why are farm asset values and equity increasing at a very good rate of return?

[oneoff]

If you don't care about the demise of "family farms" as we have known them, then it is easy to say that the largest farms produce nearly all the food anyways.
End of story; never did apparently need so many small producers anyway.

Now if you want to talk about efficiencies; I'm not just sure there are any except the one manager controlling tens of tousands of acres of territory (and the labor pool they control).
If it still requires taxpayers dollars to keep those largest operations afloat, would it not be more productive to split those large payments anongst many more farmers. They can't be left adrift in a modern society; and must be looked after anyways.

I suspect that farm land prices represent the necessity to park some excess profits somewhere; and would wholly agree that productive farmland is one of the best long term bets for any investor. But I'm talking tens of years.

As for picking and choosing which Stats Canada data or survey is accurate; I refuse to waste any time debating all suspect, post fact information; especially considering that given enough figures you can manipulate and force any conclusion anyone might wish to come to.

Then all that is left is to do the better job selling and spreading your conclusions.

[charliep]

Not sure conclusions you are attributing to me. The industry is changing with new equipment/technology the driver. No 12 foot drills pulled by a 60 hp and seeded into summerfallow versus 50 feet of one pass seeding technology pulled by a 450 horsepower tractor on stubble. Not a comment on whether this is good or bad but the reality.

A long way off topic. Sorry about that. Perhaps the relation to the original topic is the level of insecurity on other economic fronts and the risk this poses agriculture. Not the 1980's but the comments/attitudes has many common features. The attitude from the late 1970's is a manager could do nothing wrong.

[oneoff]

How about a comment about the relative efficiency of a 12 foot implement pulled by 60 HP; compared to 60 feet and a 450 HP tractor.

Before jumping to wild conclusions; be sure to take into account that the amount of iron and tires and hydraulics to tie together something five times larger; doesn't just involve 5 times the iron; and lugging a semi load of seed and fertilizer and tons of iron over every acre just eats into the energy efficiency. Theres that old square of the size (not doubling) needed to make things structurally sound.
The point being that a pretty solid case could be made; that outside human time savings; its down right expensive in every other way of measuring resources consumed to make the biggest equipment perform the fantastic area that they can cover.
And thats why many fewer farmers are needed; and the die has been cast.

This largely happened to farmers and once the last of the aging 50 and 60 year olds move out of the way; the transition will be complete.
Maybe that where the organic niche of wanna be farmers will find their lasting place.

[oneoff]

How about a comment about the relative efficiency of a 12 foot implement pulled by 60 HP; compared to 60 feet and a 450 HP tractor.

Before jumping to wild conclusions; be sure to take into account that the amount of iron and tires and hydraulics to tie together something five times larger; doesn't just involve 5 times the iron; and lugging a semi load of seed and fertilizer and tons of iron over every acre just eats into the energy efficiency. Theres that old square of the size (not doubling) needed to make things structurally sound.
The point being that a pretty solid case could be made; that outside human time savings; its down right expensive in every other way of measuring resources consumed to make the biggest equipment perform to cover the fantastic area that they must now till, seed and harvest.
And thats why many fewer farmers are needed; and the die has been cast.

This largely happened to farmers and once the last of the aging 50 and 60 year olds move out of the way; the transition will be complete.
Maybe that where the organic niche of wanna be farmers will find their lasting place.

[hedgehog]

london olympics 2012, if they had thought ten yrs ago what todays scenario is in britain, they couldnt have made it up.
half of london being evicted to make room for olympic tourists, the big banks broke, property unsaleable, interest rates 0.5%, rangers football club bankrupt and going to div 3, and now the monsoon, wettest summer ever.

[ado089]

I use a 25 gallon yard sprayer with an
8004 flat fan nozzle and ball valve and
treat loading into the truck with an 8"
auger. It makes a bit of mess so next year
I'll be looking at putting it into some
sort of shield. I also have an auger with
a 1/2 tube cut it and welded to the auger
tube to pump treatment into. It works good
but coverage isn't quite as good as the
nozzle.