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Northeast Indiana | Either you are using way too much fertilizer, or using horses for all of your field work. I'm not saying fuel cost of a combine is all that important, but I can't understand how fuel cost can only be 3% of your fertilizer cost. It costs $1000 to fuel up a modern combine or large frame tractor, doesn't take a whole lot of fill ups to surpass 3% of the fertilizer costs. I supposed you could hire out a lot of operations on your farm and that could make up for some of the direct fuel costs.
Edit: Our 1500 acre farm uses close to $40k in fuel per year the last 5 years. That includes fuel for trucking crops, fertilizer, water for spraying; fuel for the grain cart tractor; fuel for the farm pickup; planting pass; side dress nh3 pass; fall tillage pass and spring tillage pass; multiple sprayer passes. There is no way a farm is anywhere close to 3% of fertilizer costs, even excluding the tillage passes.
Edit: I forgot that fuel number also includes pumping our 12 million gallon lagoon along with manure application on over 500 acres and fuel for our 360 rain machine irrigating some of our ground. If you cut our fuel costs in half to account for these fuel uses a lot of farms don't have, you still aren't anywhere close to 3% of fertilizer costs.
Edited by Bhrfarms 10/12/2025 11:26
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Combines
