Cost to Combine?

How much is combining? How much does combining cost?

If I had 100 acres of corn to combine, how much could I expect to pay someone to combine for me?
Do they normally charge per acre?

Actually, I’m starting very small, I only have 5 acres of corn to combine.

Combining is getting done very late in our area, north Missouri, because of a big rain in Oct.

I’ve asked several neighbors and everyone said no.

I’m guessing one reason might be, that people do a quick calculation on how much they would make, combing a small acreage, and decide it’s not worth it.

So, I’m thinking I need to offer more than they’re thinking.
I need to offer a person doing custom combing, more than their standard “per acre” charge. I need to offer them enough, so it's worth their time to combine a small amount.

How much would a standard per acre charge be?
How much would you suggest that I offer someone to combine only 5 acres?

Not that this matters, but it’s organic corn, which is bringing around $10 a bushel, so I’m hoping to make $4,500 on my small field.

Thank you,
Doug

Attached is a custom rate chart that ISU puts out every year. These are based soley on what people either charged or paid the previous year.

Now in your case we have a couple of variables that may be some of the problem.

I will start with the Organic part. Are you certified Organic? If so this is major hang up numbero uno. For your crop to be certified doesn't the machine have to have any non organic crop cleaned out? If so it will be nearly impossible to get someone interested in 5 acres. You are talking a half day job cleaning out the machine to do 5 acres.

Variable number two. When production farmers are struggling just to get their own crop in there isn't much desire to do something like this.

Also what do you have for wagons/trucks? Do you have rolling stock that will hold the whole harvest?

What are the weeds like in your field? Once again not interested in contaminating my machine with a bunch of weed seed to harvest your 5 acres.

Does your planter match what your neighbors are using as to #of rows and row width?

All that being said are you asking BTO's? They will be less interested in doing your crop for the reasons mentioned above.

Also now is not the best time to line this up esp if you knew you were gonna need someone to do this.

Sorry to be harsh but I am giving you the perspective from a small production operator (farm 500 acres).

BTW if someone like you came and asked me I would likely help out given the criteria above. IE my only time investment would be very modest travel and time in the field. Not waiting for wagons and not having to clean out my machine to meet organic certification.

Offer a smaller neighbor the upper end of the numbers on the chart and you may have some luck.

JM2CW

jt
Iowa State University extension custom rates survey

Travel distance is one problem. I farm 4 acres that is 5 miles away. (Family deal....) it costs me more fuel and tire wear and time to drive there and back, than to actually do the combining. You need to find someone right close.

The other problem is you need an ultra clean combine. I'd be scared to combine your field; your corn doesn't pass the organic tests and you will come after me for contaminating it..... Takes an awful long time to clean out a combine that good.....

In a tough year, time is gold, everyone runs out time.

This Iowa State site is often a good reference point for custom charges in the upper Midwest. They are average $35 an acre for corn combining, with a wide actual range.....

Paul
PDF Iowa state custom rates

That's kinda funny, same time stamp and content, your message and mine.

Paul

If I had to combine your 5 acres, I'd probably charge you $1000.

Basically, it comes down to how much time it takes me to get there (assuming I was in your area, but not right next door), time to clean my machine out both before and after(what if you are full of cocklebur or ragweed? I'm not bringing that home with me.), time to cut your acres, and time to load up and bring my machine home. I wouldn't bring chase carts with me for such a small acreage. I would assume you had enough room to take the corn off my combine as soon as I get a full bin. I wouldn't bring a chase cart for 5 acres, but, I'd assume you could get me unloaded rather timely, not necessarily "on-the-go' but let's not take 15 minutes of messing around to get me unloaded. I'm going to commit a day and a half to your small harvest, between cleaning out, loading, transport, cutting, loading transport, and cleaning out again.


The best thing you could do is go on your local craigslist and find a gleaner k or f combine, or an old jd 55 for around $1000-1500 and buy it. If you are going to make $4500, you better spend some money on a self-sufficient harvest. Say you do 100 acres, and you get 9,000 bushels X $10 a bushel. That's $90,000 in corn per year. Think you could justify spending $50,000 on a combine and corn head that could last you 10-15 years without much maintenance? I think you can. :wink:


Also, there are a lot of guys on here who have nothing to do all day except read your troubles, laugh quietly to themselves, and then spend 20 minutes typing out a way to help you fix what broke. It happens every day. Don't be afraid to buy an old machine. It's only 5 acres. Even if you have to push the combine with a tractor, it could be done in one day.

mayby better to just buy your own picker sheller and do it yourself?
I wont go to far to do just 15 acres just not worth it.

http://kirksville.craigslist.org/grd/4780214911.html





$1200, includes a parts combine.

John and Paul pretty well covered the main issues. Your five acres is going to be hard to do for someone.

Nearly 100% of the corn around me is GMO of some type. A single ear of it in your entire five acre crop will make your corn not pass an organic test. I have seen the corn left on a roll gate on a hopper trailer do it to a load of corn. So your going to have to get some one to totally clean their combine out Before they harvest your corn. I have done that before it takes good day or two to do.

So the normal harvest rate for corn per acre really means very little for your harvest. Let say the average around here is $35 per acre to harvest corn. That is only $175 to harvest your corn. That is not much money for the time and risk for harvesting your organic crop. Even paying a $100 per acre does not make it attractive to many.

I would be looking for a small combine to buy to harvest your own crop. Even a pull type picker with a sheller attachment would work.

Now the harsh part. You planted this crop in the spring. Now your trying to arrange to have it harvested????? That is kind of late to the game. You have had six months to get your harvest lined up. You have got to realize that a small specialty crop is going to be harder to arrange harvesting for. Your organic corn is not going to be easy to harvest and still pass the test it will need too.

How far is it from your organic corn field to the next nearest field of corn?? If you are not surrounded by 1/4 mile of timber on all sides or your field is not in the middle of a 1000 acre bean field, your crop is probably cross pollinated with whatever gmo trait your neighbors plant. Pollen floats on the air. I have never planted Roundup Ready corn, my neighbor does and I have RR volunteer corn in my RR beans.
The other part of this is how easy is the access?? Drive off the road into the field, OR drive back down that 10'wide trail, watch for tree limbs, drive thru the creek 3 times and be sure to take a run at that last crossing, it's soft there, but when I hit it in 4th wide open on my M, I can usually dig right thru it and out the other side. If those are the directions, I doubt you will find anyone to even consider it. Are you a good neighbor or the one that everyone does their best to avoid? Lots more variables here, but sounds to me like if you are planning to do this regularly, you need to buy your own specialized equipment to handle it and stop expecting your neighbors to perform a miracle for you.
Your failure to plan ahead is not an emergency on my part. Chris

Get yourself a couple husking pegs,5 acres can be hand shucked we used to shuck 20-30 acres years ago.

My neighbor charges me $30/acre. I normally have around 20 acres/year.

Just some personal experience from back in the day, I think the guys here have given good advice already.... we started a small farm operation, I think mostly so the 6 of us kids would have something to keep us out of trouble. Dad worked in the city and partnered with a guy he worked with that lived near us. We started out with a pull type Woods Bros. picker behind an AC WD and an old gravity wagon that we wire wheeled and painted. Only had something less than 50 acres to start with total, corn acres was probably about 30 of that. For beans and oats we fixed up two AC pull type combines. We worked up to a small IH 3X series combine and about 300 acres by the time Dad retired and us kids were graduating from school.

So, I'd advise getting your own equipment to handle what you have, 5 acres isn't much, we used to raise that much in sweet corn that was all hand picked through the season. With a picker you could knock that out in no time and then shell it separately if you had to. Best wishes!

I think you will have issues with hiring out combining on organic with cross contamination in the combine.

You will also want to make sure your field is as "isolated" as possible. There might be proximity to GMO rules. You will want to rotate that crop, so might want to check with neighbors on what crop they are running each year and get out of phase. The smaller seed companies are contracting out isolated plots around here to minimize those issues.

I have an old Allis 60 that I've had for 25 years. Total repairs are in the $1500 range for the whole time. For other reasons I've had a neighbor do my combining for the last couple of years. I raise a soy bean/wheat rotation, the same as my neighbor. We've been neighbors for 40 years and I'm a pretty fair mechanic, so I help fix his machinery whenever needed. My crops are not organic, so no special clean-up needed. I also have enough wagons to hold the entire crop, no waiting for them. All he has to do is drive across the road or fencerow, no removal of a header, and he does mine at the same time as his own. I mention all this to give you some background information about the amount of time and work involved with my few acres. He charges $25/acre, but I pay him $30 because I'm so happy to get it done. We're both happy with the arrangement.

Make them get the full "organic" experience and come pick their own by hand. LOL.

The rate in my area is $30-35 per acre.... You may have to buy a combine as most farmers wont mess with 5 acres..

About 2 years ago I saw an E Gleaner with header and 2 row corn head sell for $700..The neighbors said it had only been used for 1-2 years...It looked like new and showed very little wear...Sadly it went for scrap..

If you were next door to me, and you cleaned out my combine to meet your own standards. You would be $30-35 an acre if I didn't have to fight any field conditions(extreme hills, mud, weeds). I would consider this doing you a favor.

Locally the guys with newer machines are getting well over $40 an acre.

I pay $35 per acre with trucking to elevator.
Kow Farmer Kurt

You are doing 'speciallty' work. Most guys wont want to mess with it.Especially on 5 acres. You will need to own your own combine. A good older machine will suit your needs well.I ran a 45 and 3 row for years. Pd 1500 for it.Sold it 10 years later for 1500. You should find a good machine for that fairly easily.

I pay $32 per acre for a modern 12 row combine with 1000 bushel grain cart on a 325 HP tractor on the cart here in Northwest Iowa. I pay extra for using their auger to fill my bins with my tractor on the auger. I also pay a certain amount per bushel for trucking. They come with the equipment and three experienced men, I'm the fourth man. Sometimes another man with a truck comes into play when three trucks are needed.

I make sure my lanes are wide enough so they have easy access, I mow the long grass on the edges of the lanes so the trucks can see the drop off and I have my fields consolidated so most of them are large enough to keep the combine busy for one day at least. I make sure it's easy and efficient for them when they come and in return I have a harvester who will come whenever my crop is ready. The check I write them could choke a cow, but it's once a year and then it's over. It's a two way street. Don't be bashful about walking behind their combine and checking out the job it's doing. Every bushel of corn lost per acre is equal to $3.65 or whatever, that much more per acre you are paying them. I've been involved with custom harvesting for quite awhile now over hundreds of thousands of acres and I'm very familiar with how things work. That's the reason I don't own a combine or trucks. This is what works for me. It might not work for everyone. Jim

My friend sells non GMO wheat and soybeans for food use. He has a separate combine to harvest it with. He's afraid his big combine wouldn't be cleaned out good enough from his normal GMO crops.
Will a custom harvester have his machine cleaned out good enough to meet your standards?

Buy a combine. You will never get anyone to do it. I wouldn't. I hate taking a machine on anyone else's property just because of the weed seeds I bring home. With today's combines, getting every nook and cranny clean is a near impossibility - never mind the augers and trucks. Literally. I am thinking of all of the areas in the bin on the 9500 that hold grain from one crop to the next it makes up a bushel or two easy. What about the roundup ready beans stuck on the straw walkers that get spread into your field? During the first 20 seconds the separator is turned on?

Buy an old JD 45.