Hi North Idaho Farmer do you use roundup resistant oil seed crops.just a question because i understand Canada grows quite a lott. one other question how many pounds in a bushell. in th uk we need about two and a half tons of wheat on average per acre to come out even. ps i like your 4 legged loyal freind it is the 2 legged ones you have to watch dont bite.thanks guys for so much interesting input that complements caterpillar.Atlas

Atlas yes we have roundup ready spring canola, canola doesnt yield as well here as it is for Canada and the northern plains of the U.S. so we mainly have grown it for weed cleanup and to break the disease cycle of legumes. We have also grown mustard and winter rapeseed in the past but there are no roundup ready varieties of them that I know of.

Winter rapeseed was an interesting crop to grow had to summerfallow and plant it around Aug 1 to get it to survive the winter. The next year it would be 7ft high in the good portions of the field. Cutting it with the 95s had to run in first gear and still could plug the feederhouse, slug the cylinder, etc.

As for pounds/bushel if you mean canola then it is around 50. Wheat is around 60.

Thought I should post a few pics of my own dogs, I dont ever take them in the tractors or combines but they go for the occasional truck ride....usually one decides to climb down and get in front of the gearshift when headed up a steep hill with a full load.

Here are some of the old 6602 1971 model with 18' header, definitely not my favorite combine, 6622s were a major improvement in my opinion.

I took the first three, the others were taken by a relative that visited for bit during harvest.

Men: This is fun checking these posts. It is amazing to learn how other people farm. For instance, measuring yields by the ton. My first crop after getting out of the army in 1953, was 7 bushels to the acre, less than 1/4 of a ton. Four more years of like yields, just about did me in. Had a 30 bushel crop in 1958, which kept me farming. These black and white pictures were of my Dad's harvesting rigs in 1929. He had traded his twenty Cat for a Thirty at that time. The model P Case had an outrigger wheel to help suport the grain tank, which flew off and turned combine over. I understood, they hooked the Cat Thirty to the combine with a chain, and turned back upright.

I also find it interesting how some measure wheat yields in tons.

Here wheat is sold by the bushel, barley by the ton, and everything else (legumes, oilseeds, grass seed) sold by the pound. That is also what we calculate yields by except barley we often say the lbs/acre.

As for break even yields with a current Portland prices of $4.80 for soft white I come up with 35bu/acre break even. Barley at $130/ton is just above 1.5tons/acre to break even. Red spring wheat at $6.70 a bushel needs 40bu/acre to break even.

More harvest pictures in 1948 or 1949. You notice how heavy the wheat stubble is. Maybe a 10 to 15 bushel crop, no fertilizer, just wheat after wheat. Dad purchased 5t series D4 in spring of 1945, replaced the Thirty Cat and a 22-36 McCormick Deering wheel tractor. Never got much response out fertilizer until started using NH3 in 1970. Number 6 was milo in 1956. Mumber 6 had a hydraulic leveling divice with JD crank axle. About as steep of a hill as I could find. Number 5 was 30 to 35 bushel wheat in 1958. Sorry I cannot find as spectular backgrounds as seen before. Darrol

Will step up to newer machines. I need to resize more pictures. I always liked this picture taken the fall of 1954. Didn't realize at the time, I was headed for anther poor crop. #2 is summer of 1977, pretty decent wheat for this country. #3 as probaly 2008.

North Idaho farmer those break even costs are like the cash rent prices for average row crop land out here, I am amazed at those costs. Property tax alone depending what they have your land valued at and what special districts you are put you in the neighborhood of $100/ an acre.
The overhead cost for a crop like processing tomatoes is a little over 3,000/ an acre and it only takes one good rain to destroy them. The average investment on trees is in the neighborhood of 30K / acre before you see a crop.

Everything is traded on the hundred weight for over 100 years out here, Dry beans, grain, oil seeds. Over time people have switched from how many sacks per acre, to how many tons per acre probably as the change from 100lb sacks to bulk.

Darroll- good pics, interesting to see farming from such a different range of years.

CR- There is no way I could imagine farming with costs and risks like that.

Property tax is insignificant here, land rent is generally 1/3crop -1/3chemical but to make things easier we have started just paying cash rent based on how profitable farming was on the given year. Before the massive increase in prices and costs in 2007 $55/acre was considered fair cash rent here.

Here is a spreadsheet we use for our farm. Have a huge spreadsheet with a variety of info on it, from costs of different chemical tankmixes, to costs of each tillage operation, profitability of different crop rotations, etc. This is just the "crop" page of it.

Obviously many of these costs are specific to our operation with most other farmers in the area having a higher new equipment cost per acre and higher insurance costs.

Yields used are generally a 10 year average.

Crop prices listed are current and already have the freight taken out of them.

It has basically all the crops we would consider growing in the next few years.

Also I should say that for the crop names "S" stands for spring variety "W" for winter "DNS" is red spring wheat "R" canola is roundup ready, and for fallow "C" stands for chem fallow and "B" stands for black summerfallow

Hi North Idaho Farmer. Do you use the university Ag Extension services to assist you in managment decisions and costings. They seem to me to be realy switched on. Atlas

Atlas- no we dont very much, there are some services available like that but alot of their numbers just dont make sense. The numbers in the previous post were all calculated by either me or my father, lets just say we are more mathematically inclined than most farmers. Actually have calculus based equations on another portion of it to calculate yield loss by planting date and to show the most profitable amount of acres to farm with current equipment.

Have put in hundreds of hours generating formulas, graphs etc. on our own microsoft excel spreadsheet and I have never seen anything as good as it for making cropping management decisions. I would say the majority of farmers here would greatly increase their income by just making a few calculations like that.