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Langdon, ND | Well it sounds a little high but that might be all relative compared to what your field sizes are, how many soil tests they are doing, and how many prescriptions they are giving (seed, chem, fert), and if its actually good agronomic advice. The highest I've seen in my area for something similar is around $12/ac. I've heard down to $5/ac with a good deal of ground. So I'll say this, say your doing 2000 acres at $20, that's $40,000. The veris machine itself costs around $30k i believe, if zone sampling to only 6" a simple probe is either a few hundred to a mechanized one for a few grand, add in the software that does the rest for say $2000. You could do it yourself and own the machine for less than what you'll spend in one year of course the kicker is time, education of the process, and possible good agronomic services. All in all in my opinion that is way to much money to provide you only with 2 years of prescriptions and zone testing. In my area most will use satellite imagery to make zones (under a $1/ac usually or less) every year, soil test those zones for around $2-3/ac, and give prescriptions for $1-3/ac after that. So anywhere from $4-7/ac usually. Now veris is nice and shows good delineation between soil types which is great. The kicker though to the veris is you really only have to do it once as long as the timing of the application was done correctly. Maybe every 5 to 10 years. What is a good option is to possibly do veris but then add satellite imagery and elevation and of course yield data to the mix if you can. This can give you a better indication of your zones. At the same time if you understand your fields well and can see them through looking and compiling multiple years of satellite imagery from the past (very common up here) then you might be just as good. If you'd want to DIY it you could do it for cheap, under $2/ac for sure but depends on your time and situation. To really answer your question though is yes that seems too high. | |
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Cost for Veris mapping? Does this sound right?
