No-till Notes: 'Dryland budgets'

Jessica Johnson, University of Nebraska Extension Educator at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center has been busy this winter working on crop budgets. Jessica has developed budgets for dry land as well as irrigated crops using different crop production systems.

For the dry land crops she developed budgets for winter wheat using conventional tillage, no-till summer fallow, and no-till continuous cropping systems. She also developed budgets for dry land corn, field peas, sunflowers, and proso millet. I would like to share some of these budgets with you. To view Jessica’s entire budgets for all crops you can go to http://panhandle.unl.edu\web\panhandlerec\panhandle_ag_econ.

Jessica has her budgets broken down into total operating and use related operations costs, or basically cash costs, and total cost per acre including overhead. Often producers look only at cash costs but the true costs should include overhead costs.

Let’s start by looking at the cost of producing winter wheat in a wheat summer fallow production system. The two systems Jessica developed budgets for include conventional clean tillage fallow and no-till fallow which is often referred to as chemical fallow.

For conventionally tilled clean fallow the cash cost is $179.18 per acre and the costs including overhead costs is $232.18 per acre. At today’s market price for winter wheat at $7.02 per bushel the break even yield for this production system is 25.52 bushels per acre to cover the cash costs and 33.07 bushels per acre to cover the overhead costs.

The cash costs for a no-till chemical fallow system are $199.63 per acre. The overhead costs for this system are $252.63 per acre. This leaves break even yields to cover the costs at 28.43 bushels per acre to cover the cash costs and 35.98 bushels per acre to cover the overhead costs.

Jessica also looked at the costs for producing winter wheat in a continuous no-till crop rotation like we use on our farm. On our farm we use a winter wheat, corn, field pea rotation. The cash costs for producing winter wheat in this system are $143.69 per acre with a break even yield of 20.46 bushels per acre. The costs for this production system including overhead costs are $196.69 per acre with a break even yield of 28.01 bushels per acre.

When you look at the budgets for these winter wheat production systems it’s pretty obvious the winter wheat produced in a continuous no-till crop rotation has the lowest yield requirement to break even due to the lack of the long term fallow period. Winter wheat in a continuous rotation needs 28.01 bushels per acre of production to break even. The two fallow systems require 35.98 bushels per acre for the no-till chemical fallow system and 33.07 bushels per acre for the conventionally tilled production system.

When looking at these budgets the continuous wheat grown in rotation will give a producer the best chance at being profitable provided the winter wheat crop yields similar to the fallow system winter wheat crop yields. Research has indicated that there will be some yield drag in a continuous system. The yield drag could be expected to be around 10 bushels per acre, perhaps more.

From what I have seen on our farm following the field peas is our winter wheat yields have been similar to fallow winter wheat yields provided we have normal or above normal precipitation following our field pea crop. Most producers around our region have experienced similar responses following the field peas.

In the southern Panhandle last year and areas further south in Kansas and Colorado where they were significantly below normal in precipitation most farmers I visited with all had yield drag following their field peas. A few producers had similar yields following field peas compared to their fallow wheat yields.

In the years prior to last year’s drought most producers saw little difference in their winter wheat yields when comparing fallow wheat yields to winter wheat yields following their field peas. It appears to me that the continuous winter wheat yields following field peas will be similar to fallow winter wheat yields in the normal to above normal precipitation years. I think a producer can expect yield drags during the below normal precipitation years.