Published by Farmers Guardian, November 2004.

FORAGE maize growers are getting so good at the job that the way they pay their contractors is going to have to change.

That’s the view of East Dereham, Norfolk-based contractor Peter Barrell who has seen his margins shrink as maize yields have increased.

“The average yield five years ago was 15 tonnes/acre, but we’ve seen that increase to 18-20 tonnes/acre now,” Peter says. “The best growers are even getting up to 21-22 tonnes/acre.”
While that’s good news as far as forage stocks are concerned, it’s bad news for the contractor.

“We are currently paid by the acre. The rate averaged £54 in the early 1990s and hasn’t increased by much since – and it certainly hasn’t kept up with costs,” Peter says. “Back then we could harvest 60-70 acres/day, but today the workrate can be much lower.

“On one job I might get through 60 acres in a day, while at the next the heavier crop means I only get through 50 acres,” he adds, “but the poor old contractor still has to make do with an average £59/acre even though his fuel costs and labour are the same.”

Peter – who is also a diary farmer in his own right – feels that his customers are now coming to realise that things are going to have to change.

“A dairy farmer growing maize knows exactly what his production costs are and if he grows more than budgeted the cost/tonne falls,” he says. “Why shouldn’t the contractor benefit from this as well?

“The set price we charge across the board is unfair when there is so much variability in the crops we have to tackle. There’s no doubt that heavier maize crops are costing us money, but it’s up to us to prove to farmers that we’re worth the rates that we want.”

Peter is keen to move to a new system where he charges by the number of tonnes of crop harvested rather the area of ground covered.

“The idea would be to fix the price for an average yield and then apply a surcharge or rebate depending on whether a crop is above or below average,” he says.

He has already raised the idea with several of his customers and is happy that they can see the logic behind the new system and will accept change.

As one of East Anglia’s largest dedicated forage contractors, however, Peter is prepared to drop clients who are not willing to pay what’s due and concentrate on the professional growers who can see the value of the service he is providing.

WHILE Peter Barrell has been well aware of the effect of larger crops on his business for some time, it has taken a new forage harvester with a yield monitoring system to allow him to get his point through to customers.

The 500hp John Deere 7400 – which joined P&A Barrell & Sons’ line-up of equipment earlier this year – is impressive enough from the outside, but it’s inside the cab where many of his growers have realised the game is up.

The unit is fitted with the company’s GreenStar yield monitoring system coupled to the StarFire satellite GPS system and the information that is recorded is hard to dispute.

“From a driving point of view, I can get a spot work rate which helps keep the forager working at full capacity,” Peter says, “but it’s the other data it calculates that has helped back up my argument.”

As well as the actual area of the fields he is working in – which has thrown up one or two surprises this year – Peter has access to yield/acre, number of trailers filled and the weight of the loads and total tonnages harvested on the units he is working on. Yield mapping is another option he can offer clients.

“Most customers have a good idea of the weight of crop their clamps hold, but we can weigh a trailer load and calibrate the harvester to an accuracy of more than 95%,” he says.
While larger harvesters are available, Peter feels that 500hp is big enough.

“Being a maize grower myself, I work around the clamp rather than maximising daily output,” he says. “This harvester will manage up to 250 tonnes/hour and as far as I’m concerned that’s as much as you can put in a clamp and still get effective consolidation.

“You need good consolidation for a quality crop and this size of harvester means I can work it hard but I won’t risk compromising the customers clamp.”