Comment by greedo
1 day ago
And I'm sure a farmer who's already busy is going to waste his time on a five acre lot. Hell, the yield on such a small lot (it'll mostly be end rows) will be terrible. I'm sure there's a dollar amount that would motivate someone, but at a profitable rate, not a chance in hell.
> Hell, the yield on such a small lot (it'll mostly be end rows) will be terrible.
One of my fields has a creek in the corner that divides just two acres from the rest of the field. I've never noticed any meaningful yield drag in that part.
Perhaps your soil is more fertile in that area? It's not uncommon to see a 25% drop in acreage on the border of fields due to trees, end rows etc.
25% would be quite extreme. There is some evidence of that much loss on individual rows being possible, but not the entire headland. 10% is considered to be more typical, which works out to be around a 4% loss across the entire piece. Which is well within the normal range of field variability, so it is ultimately not noticeable.
Of course, if it were a 5 acre field, with some assumptions about its shape, we'd only be talking more like a 2% loss across the entire field. Not nothing, but terrible...?
Year-to-year variability will see much larger swings than that. If that's the margin you're trying to operate on, I dare say you're cooked, even if your fields are large.
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