[Chrismidwest]

I was just wondering because ive been listening to the harvest report and seems like its getting strecthed out farther and farther. Anyone having to leave acres behind to get caught up to where you need to be

 

[Farmer Roy]

I was just wondering because ive been listening to the harvest report and seems like its getting strecthed out farther and farther. Anyone having to leave acres behind to get caught up to where you need to be

That sounds like a real c#%t act - if a contractor left me half way through a job he would never be invited back

 

[tbone95]

That sounds like a real c#%t act - if a contractor left me half way through a job he would never be invited back

Exactly what I was thinking! What makes the next guy's money better or crop more important than where you are?

 

[bent]

Don't get quite so hasty, fellows. Often the farmer will tell the cutter to move on, as the crop thats left isn't worth the cost to harvest it. I'm not there, but I hear reports of extreme mud, weeds, poor yields from drought and freeze, sprouting in the head, and wheat flat on the ground.

Wheat has 9 lives, just like a cat. And it ran out of them about mid-April.

 

[Stephan]

I had a custom-cutter pull out on me some years ago..."bigger acres up north" his excuse...didn't offer to leave a combine and truck...or send a crew back later


That was fine..I just never used him again. The same cutter at one time had a bunch of acres in my area to cut and one by one left them all with crop in the field at one time or another. Pretty soon he had no crops to cut here.


There are a lot of tough decisions a custom cutter has to make...weather and crop conditions along with squealing farmer/customers who want to be first...it's a harsh business trying to please and appease a soil brother....

 

[coogan]

So fill me in a little. In the states some farmers rely on custom harvesting operations to do their harvest for them ? What acre size are these farms ? Personally I wouldnt rely on and custom operators, our harvest window is too small to wait around for anybody.

 

[Stephan]

So fill me in a little. In the states some farmers rely on custom harvesting operations to do their harvest for them ? What acre size are these farms ? Personally I wouldnt rely on and custom operators, our harvest window is too small to wait around for anybody.

Lots of farmers don't own combines in the US....large and small.


Quite a few do own combines yet still hire some crops cut for one reason or another.


For as far back as I remember custom cutters have 'followed' the wheat harvest. Some crews taking their combines down to Texas before harvest..and riding the harvest north-bound as far as they go...some into Canada...some just to the state/area they live at.


Sort of a weird year this year..Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas wet and harvest kind of spontaneously started like everywhere at the same time!


I've noticed a recent trend away from out of state harvesters...more guys buying their own combines and custom-cutting locally...not going more than maybe 20 or 30 miles away from home.

 

[noacres]

I remember a year when the harvest dragged on for several weeks past normal. We kept at our own, but also custom harvested some for a neighbor who relied on cutters that just couldn't hang about any longer and needed to head south again.

I think it would be considerate for the cutter to talk with the farmer about how many acres are left, when a machine might be able to get on them and what the farmer is going to do if the cutter leaves.


Just packing up and driving off sounds like the wrong approach.

 

[bent]

In an ideal year the wheat harvest moves north at 30 to 40 miles a day. The custom harvester can start in south Texas in May and finish in Canada in September. So far, this year has been far from ideal. Heck, its even been far from normal.

Much of the acres harvested by custom cutters are in country where wheat is the only possible crop, often only every other year. There will be days like today, where the temperature is 100 and the wind is blowing 20 to 30 mph. The wheat crop changes from green to overdry in one day. Wheat in this country is not a robust crop, capable of standing until the farmer gets around to harvesting it. It all needs to be harvested today. See that cloud? There is no rain in it, but its got 5 minutes of pea sized hail that can thresh a ripe wheat crop. A 5 mile wide swath moving at 15-30 mph! CIH, Deere, and Gleaner still have work to do before they can harvest that fast. A custom harvester is about the only solution as far as being able to bring in a fleet of harvest equipment with operators and get the crop harvested in a timely manner.

Also, much of this country has a sparse population. There are no part time workers to help with harvest.

Not all of the country is this hard. Some farmers have irrigation, so they have fall crops to harvest as well. They often have their own combines along with year around employees.

 

[dragoguy]

I know some guys that keep busy with a few machines just picking up acres the big guys couldnt get.

 

[coogan]

Not owning your own combine is a forgein concept around here , if your small you rent your land out , and if your big you own 3-4 combines. I've seen the odd custom crew blow through over the years but they don't stick around long. At $30 an acre there aren't a lot of customers around here unless it's a bad year and people are way behind and looking at getting stranded by winter.

 

[Stephan]

Oh there are farmers around here that have more money that Croesus and don't bother to own a combine.....

 

[torriem]

By my back of the napkin calculations, if the cost of owning a combine works out roughly to $50k a year (which is about what trading every year runs last we checked), for a 3000 acre farm that's about $17/ac just to own the combine. Then add fuel. So the $30/ac cost could be competitive. Even if you own a combine for 7 or 8 years (what we try to do), the cost of trade still works out to nearly $50k a year if you trade for new.

Like coogan says, our harvest windows are too short to make custom operators work for us. If we could though we probably would. Combines are expensive and require a lot of on-going maintenance. And they sit in the shed idle for 10 months of the year. Kind of crazy if you think about it. Another factor is that here in Alberta there are a lot of specialty crops grown. Don't think a custom operator would want to mess with some of them like dry beans. Wheat, soybeans, and corn are probably a lot easier for them to deal with.

 

[SWFarmService]

If I found someone dumb enough to cut for 30$ an acre I would sell my combines for scrap.

If you figure in the depreciation of the combines, tractor and cart, plus the trucks and trailers and the price of the guy sitting in the seat of something and the fill everything with fuel in the morning you fill everything with fuel and replace a sicle you would be supprised by how not cheap it is to harvest.

I would sure hate to be making payments on a combine and be too proud to not hire someone and end up with a hail storm or something, the harvesting window is too small for us to not get help

 

[Don Boles]

Oh there are farmers around here that have more money that Croesus

Whose that?
And how do I get to know him. Or her.

 

[deererunner]

Hiring a custom crew that can bring in 2x the amount of machines that you can justify owning for your own size of farm and they get your durum or green lentils in the bin twice as fast as you could on your own and you make a grade better will pay your cutting bill.

 

[SWFarmService]

Hiring a custom crew that can bring in 2x the amount of machines that you can justify owning for your own size of farm and they get your durum or green lentils in the bin twice as fast as you could on your own and you make a grade better will pay your cutting bill.

Or even 10x the machines, last year at one point we had 8 machines running aside from our 3 and we are not that big of farmers, we dodged the bullet of low falling numbers and at harvest time we never knew such a thing existed, it dont cost a nickle more to hire 10 combines than one, I feel a guy that has most of his acres to one crop should always hire at least a little bit done so when you do need them they will be there, lots of guys lost their cutters here in the last few years cause they bought bigger combines that they thought were capable of getting the job done, now they lost thier help plus another combine or so in quality losses.

Saveing money on harvesting is usually not what its cracked up to be, I know it seems like alot of money when you cut the check but it was going to cost 75% of that anyways if the wind didn't do any damage to your canola and got no rain on your durum and no hail on your wheat. So just take the last 25% you give to your harvester as crop insurance and you will be money ahead

 

[coogan]

If I found someone dumb enough to cut for 30$ an acre I would sell my combines for scrap.

If you figure in the depreciation of the combines, tractor and cart, plus the trucks and trailers and the price of the guy sitting in the seat of something and the fill everything with fuel in the morning you fill everything with fuel and replace a sicle you would be supprised by how not cheap it is to harvest.

I would sure hate to be making payments on a combine and be too proud to not hire someone and end up with a hail storm or something, the harvesting window is too small for us to not get help

So you are paying more than $30 an acre ?

 

[SWFarmService]

38$ since we bag a large portion of the crop, going rate is 42-45

I ain't about to become no custom harvesrer anytime soon, that is plenty cheap, I dont see why anyone would think thats expensive, I might be abe to find someone cheaper but I am not going to give up the acces to all them machines, trucks and carts

 

[coogan]

I'm not debating whether it's expensive or not, or what works for you. Obviously things are different in different parts of the continent. I'm just saying it doesn't seem to work where I am located or we would be seeing more of it.