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Iowa | 1) $5-6/A times probably 2 passes in RR beans or one pass laying down a PRE and later a roundup pass is still 2 passes, so $10-12/acre CASH outlay stopped. I know it costs something to spray your own--most of those costs are not CASH.
2) Savings on product from shopping around is substantial. I would suggest you buy the Roundup (since it is cheap) from someone whose advice you may need, and shop around for everything else. It is a lonely feeling to have bought EVERYTHING over the net and then have no one local to turn to for questions.
3) Yield penalty from being this late if your beans are "naked" will be VERY real and could reach 10-15% or more easily. 50 bu bean potential times 15% times $8/bu is about $60 per acre.
4) Say insects show up and you can go the very day you find them, rather than wait for a custom guy--once again, you will protect $10, 20, 30 ,40 dollars per acre of yield.
5) Spot spraying--nearly every season, we go out and spot-spray some trouble spots rather than the entire field--the savings can be quite large!
You don't have to buy a tricked-out rig. When I started farming on a shoestring, a sprayer was a MUST because I paid less for a simple, functional system than one year's custom bill would have been. Sounds like you may have went a bit too fancy on the planter--maybe not, but you say it stretched yu where you couldn't afford a sprayer, so I think so...
Hindsight is always 20/20, but it seems a less expensive planter and a sprayer would have allowed you a much more profitable season. The ease of just picking up the phone can cost you your entire profit when negative scenarios stack up like may happen this year. I was on such a tight budget for years that I couldn't take that chance. You are leaning a hard lesson that could have been avoided.
I will not be a smart*ss or be rude, but I hope you get the point. We all make mistakes. But please learn from this, and it will never need to happen again. | |
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Tired of being "at the top of the list" I WANT MY STUFF SPRAYED
