7tonne weekend

[ianben]

Had the weekend off.
Traveled 300 miles Two nights in good, but not the best, hotel, meals and a few drinks. Cost about 7tonnes of wheat.

How many tonnes would a similar trip cost in your neck of the woods

[TOM4CWB]

Ianben:

A QUebec farmer probably has the least tonnes cost...@ $215/t USD... and a Western Canadian farmer the worst... as some folks are getting $50/t USD... while others cannot get anything at all for frozen feed wheat!

How much value is your wheat bringing in $/t USD?

[grassfarmer]

At last weeks prices US$113 a tonne ex farm for feed wheat and $156 for milling.

[timm]

at 150 can/mt, i would say 4 mt would do it for rooms ,meals,& travel for 2.300 miles would only get us to the nearest city of 200,000.

[ianben]

Sold feed wheat for Dec at £65 $120US.

Thanks timm
I found cost of living in Canada seemed to be just over half of UK on my visits.Looks like it is still the same.

I believe that if I sold up in uk and reinvested in Canada I would be able to acheive a better standard of living.

[grassfarmer]

Is that reinvested in Canada or reinvested in AGRICULTURE in Canada?
It's certainly a cheaper place to live in many ways - just as well given the(negative) income levels in the beef sector currently.

[Ration-Al]

ianben,

many people from UK have sold out and then bought larger farms in Saskatchwan. The reports that I hear is that many are struggling. The challenge they face is no different than any of us. They need additional labor. Those employees must be capable of operating large expensive machinery and must be willing to accept lower wages than their urban counterparts and they must accept seasonal employment. Some people are taking on operations that are ten times larger than what they had in UK. If they went from 350 acres in UK to 3500 acres in Canada and with average cash costs in the $100 per acre plus range this means risking $350,000 to put the crop in the ground. Not everyone is up to the challenge of managing operations taking this amount of hours and risk capital. The government support systems are very different and do not provide anything like the kind of guarantees that they would have been used to.

Now if you want to take your money and go to Canmore Alberta and drive taxi. That is different.

[ianben]

Yeah
I did mean invest in agriculture. No desire to drive a taxi anywhere. Here to would give a much better return.

Grassfarmer

New subsidy rules look like making beef production here very foolish as subsidies decoupled from production from 05.

Mega price rise needed to be feasable.
Imports will stop that so due to your unfortunate predicament could UK producers get some bargain basement stock and still supply their market?

Ration-al

I was not trying to be clever I think we face similar problems wherever we farm. Just trying to show subsides are not the easy solution and are more like your crop insurance than free money.

I have never thought it would be any easier to farm in Canada and always knew I would have lots to learn.

I have met UK farmers who thought they could farm there like they did here. Would not be suprised to hear they are struggling.
Our only advantage is the inflated value of our assets