Buying Advice How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm

   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #21  
Consider doing a lot more planing, estimating cost/earnings and seeing the local agriculture agent before laying out any money for equipment.:D
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #22  
Consider doing a lot more planing, estimating cost/earnings and seeing the local agriculture agent before laying out any money for equipment.:D


My guess is it would need more planning too. A small utility tractor would be nice to have to get started, to really work 300 acres will take an assortment of tractors and equipment.
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #23  
I really can't improve on the advice given so far. Having grew up farming many years ago and having been out of it since the early 70's nothing I could tell you would be relevant today. I still live on a farm and my wife recently retired from USDA, so we have some frame of reference. I do know enough about farming that we rent out all of our tillable ground 180 acres on one farm and about 120 on another a few miles away. We have taken a little over 100 acres out of production completely. We have our Great Plains no till for sale.

You simply cannot imagine the obstacles or requirements. You not only have the tractor and equipment, but a combine, grain truck/trucks/buggies, grain storage with dryers or pay a boatload to have this done AFTER everyone else has finished with theirs. Depending on where you live, you will need to look into putting your land to grade for irrigation or price walking rigs if your land can't be contoured properly. You will also need sheds for storage of equipment if you don't already have them. You need to become a decent welder or make friends with one, get lots of tools, really big air compressor etc.

We raised cattle and you couldn't get me back into that at the point of a gun.

You really need to have a good financial reserve for the off years. Prices are not bad now, but have been and may be again.

Just a few thoughts for what they are worth and I am sure others will disagree. Also, I am not saying it can't be done, just not by me.
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #24  
This discussion reminded me of one of my favorite jokes about farming:

"What's the best way to make a Million dollars farming?"

"Start with $2 Million!"

GGB
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #25  
Good point-I was referring to 30" row equipment, not 40". In our area, you really don't see much left of the older 40"-much of it has gone to the recycler when scrap iron prices went up, but I'm sure there's still 4 row equipment out there. (For that matter, a lot of used up 6 row equipment has gone to the scrapyard as well.)

My thought was that you can get by with a smaller, less expensive tractor if you are using 4 row equipment.

It's certainly true that the newer tractors are more fuel efficient, but without know the budget and available time available for the operation, I was assuming a limited budget but a lot of time. Although fuel is certainly one of the costs of operation, you can still buy a lot of fuel with the money not spent on a more expensive tractor. Just a thought....

Ken Sweet, can you chime in on this subject?

GGB

Here there are some 4RW around yet but 4 row narrow isn't real common. Depending on the soil a 65+ hp 4WD should not have a problem with a 6 row planter. We pulled a 4RW with two types of fertilizer with 70 hp 2WD and pull 6RN with 2 ferts with 90 hp 2WD.

Not sure how you would even combine 4RN with modern equipment. We have a JD 9410 that is about as small as it gets for a modern machine and it is tight in 4RW.
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #26  
Hey GBB,
Love the joke, I am going to use it but subsitute horses for farming and tell it to all my wife's friends.
Thanks
Dave
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #27  
I really can't improve on the advice given so far. Having grew up farming many years ago and having been out of it since the early 70's nothing I could tell you would be relevant today. I still live on a farm and my wife recently retired from USDA, so we have some frame of reference. I do know enough about farming that we rent out all of our tillable ground 180 acres on one farm and about 120 on another a few miles away. We have taken a little over 100 acres out of production completely. We have our Great Plains no till for sale.

You simply cannot imagine the obstacles or requirements. You not only have the tractor and equipment, but a combine, grain truck/trucks/buggies, grain storage with dryers or pay a boatload to have this done AFTER everyone else has finished with theirs. Depending on where you live, you will need to look into putting your land to grade for irrigation or price walking rigs if your land can't be contoured properly. You will also need sheds for storage of equipment if you don't already have them. You need to become a decent welder or make friends with one, get lots of tools, really big air compressor etc.

We raised cattle and you couldn't get me back into that at the point of a gun.

You really need to have a good financial reserve for the off years. Prices are not bad now, but have been and may be again.

Just a few thoughts for what they are worth and I am sure others will disagree. Also, I am not saying it can't be done, just not by me.

Do you really think that trucks and buggies are necessary for ~80 acres of corn? A couple of used gravity boxes would do everything necessary. Hire it hauled to market in the spring.

80 acres corn @ 200 bu/acre would require one 16k bu grain bin with a stirator and a drying floor. Not really that big of deal. 80 acres beans @ 55 bu/acre would need only a 4500 bushel bin which could easily be bought used.

None of this seams the least bit overwhelming if done over a few years.
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #28  
I agree with duffster, I wouldn't buy all the harvesting equipment, if there are other producers in the area I would contract my harvesting. We did all our own on the dairy but we were farming 1500+ acres. Sizing equipment is the key to getting it done, we aimed for getting our corn planted in about 10 days. We kept the planters about a day behind the discs, dont want the soil to dry out too much before you get the seed in.

Just saying a 100 hp or 150hp or 60hp tractor will fit your needs doesn't give you the help you need. How much time do you have to devote to the farm, do you have an off farm job that dictates your schedule? The size of your fields also needs to be taken into consideration, we had 12 to 24 foot wide discs that we used depending on the fields. We always planted with 6 row planters though.

Don't jump to the 7330 or any of the new tractors, lot of overhead that may take a lot of time to payoff. If you can afford it go for it. We farmed with all JD equipment but we kept it in the 40 series, mainly 4440 and 4640 sized equipment, technology was a little dated but we could work on it. When one of the 7000 or 8000 series tractors gets a cold it takes a doctor with a lot of expensive diagnostic equipment to fix it. That is unless you want to drop 80k or more for a new machine.

Also consider you will need spray and fertilizer equipment. This can be contracted but spraying is usually dictated by conditions and you might need it when no one is available.

I had beef cattle for many years and for the most part I teamed up with another farmer and we split the equipment costs for the hay equipment. I cut, tedded, and raked all the hay and he rolled it.
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #29  
I've known people that were in the same boat....and the best advice they got was to rent the crop land the first year or two so that they could get their homework done on what they needed and see what needed fixed. Took all the stress and hassle of having to "run" the farm off their shoulders for a couple of years while they fixed the house, barn...etc..
Give you plenty of time to ask questions and get the right equipment you need. Best wishes.
 
   / How much Tractor Do I need for 300 acre farm #30  
Do you really think that trucks and buggies are necessary for ~80 acres of corn? A couple of used gravity boxes would do everything necessary. Hire it hauled to market in the spring.

80 acres corn @ 200 bu/acre would require one 16k bu grain bin with a stirator and a drying floor. Not really that big of deal. 80 acres beans @ 55 bu/acre would need only a 4500 bushel bin which could easily be bought used.

None of this seams the least bit overwhelming if done over a few years.

Just throwing stuff out there, so maybe not, but when we were farming we lost a lot of money when we had to wait to have someone do this. We could not afford to wait a few years as we had to have other jobs. We sold all of our equipment, but kept the land. An important component left out or missed by me was the OP financial situation which would significantly impact how much he could invest and how long he could hold out.

I do not mean to be a complete downer, but I and my wife have seen too many farmers of this size lose everything including their land. It happened to our neighbor a couple of years ago. He had to sell the family farm and he grew up farming.

Refer to the last line of my post. "Also, I am not saying it can't be done, just not by me."
 
 
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