Originally Posted by flyboyd8
Thanks for the "splane" Fabmandelux!!!
I actually understood with your first post. but the splane to, Oregon-Mike makes it real clear.
As a the Goo fer for the family farm here in Central NY, I find that it cost us much more than $12 dollars an acre to plant any seed. just to prepare the ground cost many times more than that, would it be possible to get a little better breakdown of the cost of your harvested crop from bare soil to in the storage bin. I find it hard to believe that just the irrigation. didn't cost $12 per acre. not to mention a little fertilizer. I know your fuel cost are low. We have been thinking of planting some canola here, but have yet to research the conditions it needs.
Long Live the IDI
Ken H Central NY
Our farming systems are completely different for starters. We receive less than 10 inches of rain per year, so we use the "fallow" system of farming. Out of 3,000 acres I farm, less than 100 acres are irrigated. The "bottoms" that my test plots were on are irrigated, but only one was irrigated this spring.
I also use diesel pumps to irrigate with, and run them on biodiesel only.
On these test plots we used 0 pounds of fertilizer so we would have a base-line yield result with minimum irrigation, and fertilizer.
I will use these results to plan my fall planting of canola on fallow ground that just has natural moisture.
The cost of the seed was $8 per acre, and the $4 per acre reflects the cost of fuel and labor for planting and harvesting. The only work on the fields was discing the fields once last spring, then rod-weeding once in mid summer, then seeding in the fall. Fall canola, seeded early puts out a huge "blanket" of green canopy that makes it hard for weed seeds to grow, so herbicides are usually not necessary.
Canola is basically a desert plant. If you have lots of spring rains the yields will be a lot lower than mine are. Canola produces more seeds when stressed by lack of water in the spring and summer. If you look at my original post you will see that the plot that was irrigated this spring had a smaller yield than the plot with no spring irrigation. My neighbor just harvested a 100 acre pivot of irrigated spring canola and barely made 2,500 lbs per acre...........
Canola is not for every farm, but for our area, and rainfall it is a very viable crop.