Machinery costs can and must be controlled

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Several options are available for keeping your costs down – from machine or work sharing to buying used equipment. But what works for one will not necessarily work for others

by RALPH WINFIELD

As each one of us started or considered starting a farm operation, two major cost items immediately came to the fore. One was the cost of land and the second was the cost of machinery.

We soon calculated that we must either start a very small operation (such as a market garden) or go into debt to buy land or machinery or both. In addition to buying machinery, one must consider the timeliness factor and the operator skills required to run newer and more sophisticated machinery. Not only does someone have to operate machinery, that person must have reasonable mechanical skills to service and change the machine for different crops and do minor repairs.

Yes, you can hire good machinery operators, but if you find a competent machine operator or maintenance person, you had better be prepared to pay well and preferably hire on a year-round basis. People with those skills are hard to find and are in high demand.

Another option is to acquire part-time machinery operational skills from someone who is retired or can work after hours. But a part-time person can create some limitations. When planting and harvesting, timeliness can be of utmost importance. For example, you cannot combine most crops after the sun goes down.

Hiring a custom operator is always an option, but not always a good one. That timeliness factor again is critical and can create problems if the custom operator becomes over-extended or you encounter that one year in 10 when it just does not stop raining. The other issue is one of undesirable materials, such as weed seeds, being brought to your farm in a combine.

Buying used equipment. Buying used does provide an option for reducing initial machinery costs, but maintenance needs will be higher. In my own farming career, I purchased three used combines. Fortunately, I knew the work/maintenance history of each one of them, as I knew all of the previous owners.

Conversely, I always bought new planting and spraying equipment. For both of the latter purchases, I wanted the latest technology without having to rebuild or retrofit.

Work sharing. This is an option that worked very successfully for me, but is not one for all start-up farmers. If you work-share with a neighbour or a relative, you must also share the same philosophies. One example would be whether or not you carry out fieldwork on Sundays. Both parties have to be prepared to work closely together during planting and harvest without individual priorities coming in between. Who determines which crop gets planted or harvested first? There has to be flexibility based on which field or farm is ready for planting or harvest.

Using custom applicators. When I started farming in the mid-1970s, there were no custom spray or fertilizer applicators available in our area. Consequently, I bought both a sprayer and a fertilizer spreader.

In recent years, with custom applicators more available, we have often used them for certain time-sensitive operations even if our own machines were available. An example: if we planted a large acreage of peas on the specified day, we would book a spraying time well in advance with the local custom applicator so that we could get the field (farm) sprayed and rolled before it rained again. This timely application insurance offset the cost of leaving the sprayer parked in the shed.

We also hired the services of a big truck on a custom basis if we had a large acreage of crop that needed to be moved a long distance to a premium market.

Machinery sharing. The idea of shared machinery ownership for most equipment just does not work in most instances. Conflicting time of use and lack of routine or preventive maintenance by the sharing parties usually brings the agreement to a screeching halt within a few years. In addition, hard feelings are often generated between or among the parties that may last for many years to come. Not a desired outcome in any rural community!

Some of us can remember back to the time of community threshing efforts. They worked, but as soon as small pto combines became available, the threshing gang was disbanded in favour of independence.

However, not all machinery sharing is bad. When the vegetable processing company requested, or insisted, that we roll our pea fields after planting to push down those smaller stones and protect the pea combines, five of us banded together to buy one large roller. The arrangement worked well. Time of use is short. Routine maintenance is minimal and we are all speaking to each other after 10 years!

In conclusion, each farm unit must look at alternatives for efficient machinery usage. What works for one person or family will not necessarily work for others.

In today's movement to larger acreages and more expensive, high-capacity machines for planting through to harvesting, more and more share cropping arrangements are appearing as an alternative to the total independence that many of us preferred and demanded in the past. As we see more sophisticated variable-rate, auto-steer planting equipment becoming the norm, we realize that we not only cannot afford the technology, but many of us would not be able to operate it!

For interest's sake, look back at the number of 40-cow dairy herds that existed in Ontario in the 1970s as compared to the number of larger cow herds in existence now! BF

Agricultural engineer Ralph Winfield farms at Belmont in Elgin County.