Risk Protection Plot Results

The Nature Conservancy’s Shiawassee River Project has a Risk Protection Program in which a producer wanting to try no-till corn or soybeans has a virtually risk free way to try it out in the same field next to their usual crop management. The producer uses a Certified Crop Consultant (CCA) of their choice to give recommendations that they follow for the side-by-side plots. WinMax®, (http://www.agry.purdue.edu/max/) a free, downloadable computer program developed at Purdue University to calculate and compare economic returns on crop production, is used to determine the economic return of each plot. Each producers plot results are unique from the data acquired from their operation.

Using input costs, field operations, and harvest and marketing information profit is calculated. Some of the operating costs are listed in the output tables for comparison. The tables in the 2006 Risk Protection Plot results do not reflect any cost of erosion, which you expect to be lower with no-till. Simply adding the column will not give you total cost per acre. Not all the costs are listed and some costs are grouped. Most of the column headings are self explanatory. “Other” is a category to account for costs that do not fall with-in definitions of the program. The Inter” column reflects the cost of the money used from time of use until harvest. The “Indir” column has land rental included in it, but is not the only cost listed in the column. “Cost/Bu” (cost per bushel) is calculated by dividing total cost by “Yield” (yield/acre). “Profit” reflects income per acre minus cost per bushel.

Most of the time, in the Shiawassee River Project Risk Protection Program over the last three years, no-till soybeans are at least as profitable as conventional and reduced tillage soybeans. However, no-till corn is much more variable. Many times it comes close and occasionally outperforms tilled corn.

Return to Shiawassee River Watershed Read the Shiawassee River Report