DlO—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 14,1981
Farm equipment is getting
bigger and more expensive, and
that is changing some of the
traditional ways farmers operate.
Instead of owmng every last
piece of equipment that’s needed to
care for a modem farm, many big
operators, and some that are not so
big, are looking to leasing and
custom operators as a way of .
getting out from under the heavy
burden of farm equipment
ownership
Bake in the good old days, an
enterprising young farmer would
buy the necessary tools of
agriculture for a few hundred
dollars Granted, that was a lot of
money in those days but it wasn’t
that hard to get started Now a
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Farm
Talk
Jerry Webb
moderate size beginner is looking
at a farm equipment debt of a
couple of hundred thousand
dollars And that, combined with
today’s inflation and high interest
rates, is almost too much
Department of Agriculture
figures indicate farm equipment
costs now account for about one
fourth of total production costs on
the farm and that’s up con
siderably from just 10 years ago
USDA economist Lloyd Biser
says rising costs are squeezing all
farmers, but especially those who
started farming in the past few
years and those who borrowed
captial recently to expand
When the squeeze is really on, he
points out, it’s a lot easier to lease
a special piece of equipment that’s
needed only occasionally, rather
than face the high cost of owner
ship
To give some idea of what’s
happening in the lease business,
Biser points out that farmers
spend about 10 percent of their
total expenditures for farm
machinery on equipment leases
and custom work Popular lease
items include large tractors, ex
pensive tillage equipment, plan
ters, trucks, even combines
Custom work has been around
for generations It used to be more
of a work-swapping sort of thing,
with one fanner providing an extra
tractor or a planting ng in ex
change for another farmer’s help
at threshing time Or maybe the
first farmer in the neighborhood to
purchase a com picker would
harvest for the neighbors at a
predetermined rate per acre
Custom work has gotten a lot
more sophisticated these days with
some operators limiting their
farming to custom work only
A lot of indicators aie pointing to
this specialized kind of farming
where in the future certain ser
vices will be performed by those
who are specifically equipped to do
it and have special knowhow
Such things as gram harvesting,
planting and chemical application
might all be done by custom
operators, who would maximize
their use of expensive equipment
and special skills and would
relieve the farmer of the burden of
equipment ownership
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BLUE BALL MACHINE WORKS
Box 716, Rt. 322 Blue Ball, PA 17506 717-354-4478
It has long been an agricultural
dilemma for the farmer to own
costly machines that were used
only a few days a year
The combine is the classic
example of that A good one now
costs as much as $lOO,OOO and can
be used for only one purpose to
harvest gram That means a few
days or a few weeks of operation a
year The rest of the time it sits
around depreciating and costing
money.
In the, days of horsepower, a
farmer would own a good team of
horses and a wagon, a plow, a disk,
a cultivator, and a grain binder
That might be the sum total of his
equipment inventory That team of
horses provided the power for
plowing, planting, cultivating, and
harvesting A custom thresher
would take care of the specialized
harvesting job
Then tractors were invented
Some of those same old pieces of
horse equipment were hooked on
behind them to do the same kinds
of jobs simply replacing the
horses But farm machinery got
more sophisticated and tractors
got larger and special tractor tools
were invented and combines
replaced threshing machines, and
suddenly every farmer in the
community owned several trac
tors, a full range of tillage
equipment, a com picker, a
ckeir
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combine, and other
equipment
Most of it sat in the shed or out in
the barn lot most of the time
Farmers always have justified
that expensive equipment because
of the timeliness factor They must
have the tools they need when the
weather conditions are right to do
the job
What would happen, they ask, if
they had to wait for a custom
operator to plant their com or
harvest their barley’
A day or two difference might
mean a crop failure. And yet grain
has been harvested in the western
states that way for years Custom
operators, who start in the south
and work their way north proceed
as the crop ripens so everybody
gets the harvest about when it’s
needed
Enterprising farmers who are
having a tough time in today’s
farming game are finding new
ways to solve this equipment
dilemma
Some of them bitterly resent
being ruled by the very machines
that are supposed to be serving'
them. And so they’re getting rid of
this burden through leases, custom
applicators, work swapping, ,and
other devices aimed at easing the
crunch and allowing them to farm
and still make a little money
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