RADISSON, Sask. – John Clair began looking for ways to address rising fuel costs in the early 1990s. He knew that the need to farm more acres for less money was the future of dryland agriculture in Western Canada.
In 1994 the Radisson farmer moved to conservation tillage and hasn’t missed his cultivator shovels.
Now farming with his daughter Laura and son-in-law Jack Reiter, Clair said lowering his farm’s impact on the planet also meant improving his bottom line.
“We needed to be able to farm more land,” he said.
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“Now, with the kids adding land, we also knew we wouldn’t have any more days in the year to seed, spray or harvest …. It’s about having the right size of equipment and running it as efficiently as possible.”
Before shifting from sweeps to knives for his seeding strategy, the farm operated two tractor and tillage units 500 hours year. A spray tractor was also in the field for 100 to 200 hours.
“It took at least three passes with summerfallow and seeding. Now we farm more land and use one tractor that runs 300 hours (per year) with a sprayer that puts on a few more hours with a burn-off application, but those hours don’t use much fuel,” Clair said.
“We aren’t nearly as popular as we used to be at the (fuel) dealer. I used to (budget) for about one gallon of fuel per acre of land. Today we book about half of that, maybe a little less.”
Laura Reiter said as younger farmers she and Jack noticed higher fuel bills this season as the price of farm diesel jumped above 90 cents a litre.
“It really stings you in the cash flow, especially when you’re making payments on everything.”
Clair said other savings came because the larger tractor is more fuel efficient.
“Even better, we don’t trade tractors as often,” he said.
“We used to wear out a tractor every five years. This one is 12 and we’ve got no intention of trading it. It is doing exactly what it is designed to do and that makes it efficient.”
Seeding in a single pass opens up other cost savings.
“We’ve noticed a lot of our neighbours avoiding the anhydrous ammonia this year,” Clair said. “It’s a little cheaper source of nitrogen, but it costs more to apply it because of the fuel. That and most farmers have to get over more land in the same amount of time. It forces you to be as efficient as you can be.”
Conservation tillage has also improved his soil, resulting in less water erosion on his sloped land along the North Saskatchewan River. It is erosion he no longer has to repair.
“Every time you don’t start the tractor, it saves money,” he said.
