What are your thoughts on the fertiliser price s for 2022

Their variable costs are a hell of alot bigger fraction than ours, and profit per litre alot lower (but obviously alot more litres per cow etc), so if they don't fix a reasonable amount of variable costs then they could quickly find themselves in the red by a huge amount. If the fertilizer doubles for the average dairyfarmer here lets call that means 6cent instead of 3cent a litre, and so fair the base increasing will of more than covered that. The only question for me is what if it more than doubles, and I can only get say 50% what I need lol, that's what I'll roughly plan towards, but hopefully won't come to that.

Sbarley trading at £250 ton for january delivery, bread wheat will be atleast 100 more next harvest. Be a world of beans and low n crops put in next spring.

Alot of the buying groups earned their money for once and snapped up An for 400- 450 back in August.

I passed a small tillage farm locally today. I never saw such a stash of fertiliser in my life. He has tried to hide it behind some trees.

It one thing forward buying fertlizer. If you do you need inside storage. Fertlizer that gets wet or damp is a pain in the hole to deal with. Unless you have internal storage I gamble until spring time.

But your forgetting the extra cost of all the fertiliser a crop of maize needs …

Year after, using a early maturing variety here, that can be feed straight away after cutting, maize was cut here on the 24 th of September this year and has been making up 40% of the cows tmr since the start of October, compared to a 3 cut silage system you'll get away with using a third of the nitrogen....

Have the required fertilizer re p's and k's plus slirry to grow a good chunk of maize in the shed already and nitrogen,it's a risk worth taking re getting a good crop with the general consensus been protein crops like soya bean and beans will be grown in 2023 worldwide instead of maize/wheat/barley as they need little to no nitrogen, so balancing the protein in the maize will be good value hypothetically then trying to buy in energy for the diet to balance silage in grain maize/barely etc that will be by all accounts cost a fortune

Feeding ‘hot’ maize straight after pitting is a dangerous thing to do. You’re running the risk of exploding the bacterial flore in the stomach. At least give 100g/hd of baking soda??

Agreed on the maize being a very successful crop here. I'm back to about 80units bag N. Yep its an expensive crop per ac to grow and harvest (best part of 800e/ac with last few yrs costs), however one harvest against the 3 with grass silage, and doing very rough sums we get our 20t dm/ha fairly consistently here, so thats working out at about 10c/kgdm in the pit. Plastic from 2023 onwards needs to be biodegradable which will add something like 50e a roll. Will be interesting to do the sums on the rest of the input costs for next year, lets say its 1200e, that will be 15c/kg dm, I guess what will the equivalent price increases be for grass silage crops?

And yeh interesting point about the seed rates Dawg, certainly something that I'll annoy the sower next year about reducing 15% or so ha.

There's no-one sowing maize at them rates in Ireland, or certainly not under plastic anyway. 10 - 15 years ago when Justina and Benicia were the most common varieties recommended seed rate was 39 - 44k per acre or 96 - 109k per ha. With the newer varieties being used now FAO's of a minimum of 200 and up to 230 are being used and recommended seed rates would be 36 - 40k per acre or 89 - 99k per ha.

I can assure you Teagasc knowledge of maize can only politely be described as minimal at best. If there's anyone considering maize as a new grower then Teagasc should be the last place to go for advice.

I see Samco have a maize starch based plastic developed which will still be allowed to be used but as you say a price increase of 40 - 50%. I believe they are also working on a new system for the machines which will allow the plastic to be layed in single rows over the plants instead of 1 roll covering the 2 rows. This will allow for 40% less plastic being used as the space between the plants will not be covered. I suppose theoretically this should keep the cost per acre somewhere similar to what it is now as the reduced quantity balances out the increased price.

Maize here last 2 years …2 bumper crops …sown at 50 k seeds per acre …gets 7/8 k slurry split over 3 applications …2 bags/acre 0 7 30 and 2 bags urea acre down with seed ….I know of lads using way more than that that would proably see dwag blow a head gasket !!!!!!….we don’t have a great climate or the scale to grow Maize like dwag would and thus we sow heavier ,use plastic and throw the kitchen sink at it pre sowing ….in the lap of the gods after that ….was very worried about mine through may wind damaged plastic and it was cold and wet …powered on from June got bumper crop I’ll be disappointed if it dosnt come back at 35/36 maby more starch

normal maize plastic is available for next year

8 bags 18 6 12 per ac if no organic fert is used is the lash it out approach here. (Sorry dawg, hope that doesn't cause a heart attack lol). Which for Wicklow soils is far too much p, the 144 units N actually still compares favourably compare to any sort of 2 or 2 cut grass silage system, but still far to much for me. One thing you do gotta factor in also, if your ploughing a permanent grass field for maize you'll get an additional 40units N from the soil.

If buying in feed maize is up there, but if on leased ground young stock + silage is the more flexible approach unless milking during the winter imo.

Early plus late grazing would give lower wintering costs and keep quality right