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by 9rx 139 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
greedo 138 days ago
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.
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9rx 138 days ago
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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greedo 138 days ago
Well the smaller a field, the larger proportion of end rows. And I was referring to end rows, not the entire field. A 5 acre field is pretty small, and my rough guess is that between end rows, rows shaded by trees and close to water sources, the loss could be pretty significant. Now if you're talking 500-1000 acres, end rows are nothing in the scheme of things.
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9rx 138 days ago
> And I was referring to end rows, not the entire field.

As was I. 10% loss is considered typical, but that amortizes to only ~4% and ~2% for two and five acre fields respectively. So you suggest that 2% is "terrible" and "pretty significant", but I say it is essentially imperceptible from normal field variability. If you pick a random five acre plot out in the middle of a 100 acre field, there is a decent chance that it will 2% or more below the field average too.

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greedo 138 days ago
Are you seeing this with corn or other crops? I don't have any experience with anything but corn and beans.
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