Browsing by Author "Kangas, Jaakko"

New primary tillage methods have appeared alongside traditional ploughing. Objectives of primary tillage can nowadays be achieved with other methods such as by exploiting nature’s own processes or with chemical weed control. The endeavor of farmers to save time and money has caused conservation tillage to become more common. Different methods of conservation tillage and no-tillage has been replacing traditional ploughing. Conservation tillage has had various kinds of effects to achieved yields. Some international studies reported that conservation tillage had reduced yields. On the other hand, the rest of the studies point out that either the yield remained at the same level or at times, yield levels rose with reduced tillage. The aim of this study was to determine the profitability of different tillage methods. The profitability of three different primary tillage methods were compared at three farm sizes (50, 100 and 200 ha). Retail prices of farming machinery and Luke’s on-going field experiments on clay soil in Jokioinen were drawn on for data used in this study. Luke has been running no-tillage field experiments in Jokioinen since 2000. Yield data of spring barley from Jokioinen field experiment was used in this study. No-tillage was the most profitable tillage method on every farm size. The costs of no-tillage was 145?279 €/hectare lower than the costs with ploughing and 111?234 €/hectare lower than the costs with cultivation. The surplus of no-tillage was 93–226 €/hectare greater than surplus with ploughing and 69?192 €/hectare bigger than the surplus achieved with cultivation as a primary tillage. The profitability of cultivation was 16–34 €/hectare bigger than the surplus acquired through ploughing. No-tillage was more economically beneficial on a field which had less clay in its texture. The no-tillage’s surplus was 183?317 €/hectare bigger than the ploughing’s surplus and it was 161?284 €/hectare bigger than the cultivation’s surplus. Fields of similar size were used when analyzing the difference of profitability between ploughing and cultivation. This study asserts that the profitability of primary tillage method depends on machinery, weather conditions, soil type and the size of the farm. In this study, no-tillage was more profitable even though the yields produced were less than with traditional primary tillage. The profitability of the different primary tillage methods varied erratically between farms and for this reason, an unambiguous answer for profitability cannot be given.