Spraying days. Using your machinery or outsourcing company?

During the last days, we worked with our Fitosa sprayer to weed out the pulse vegetables (peas and yeros) and cereals (barley, triticale… we didn’t sow wheat for this year). The company, which sold us its plant protection products, supplies free water to all farmers who buy their products. It is a really good idea... we can fill our sprayer (1,200 liters) in just 5 minutes.

As you can see in our pictures, we basically used the ​four plant protection products showed below:

• Aramo 50 (Tepraloxydim 5.0%).  We used it in our peas and yeros. The dose used is of 1.5 l/ha... it is a very expensive product (about 30€/l). We used 300 liters of water per hectare to spray this product.
• Herbenuron​ and Ansar​ (Tribenuron-metil 75%). We used it in our cereals. The dose used is of 20gr/ha... The price of a  bottle of 100gr is about 50€ and the dose used is 20gr/ha. We used 200 liters of water per hectare to spray with this product.
• Arsol (Fenoxaprop-p Etil 6.9%). We used it in our cereals where there were wild oats. ​The price is about 38€/l and the dose used is of 1 l/ha and also we used 200 liters of water per hectare.

While we were working in these spraying jobs, we had a question about the profitability... we don't know if we carry out these tasks with our machinery is really more profitable than carrying out them through an outsourcing company. In our area, all farmers perform almost all their tasks using their tools but in other areas (we think they are areas where population are older or agriculture is lower profitable​ or more profitable... we don't know​) the outsourcing company are very common and lots of farming jobs (sowing, fertilizer, spraying, harvesting,...) are outsourced. In our case, we only carry out harvesting and fertilizer (with liquid fertilize in spring) tasks with outsourcing companies. 

We think it depends on the price, but it is a pretty good option for farmers who have other jobs or farmers don't have modern machinery... What is your position? If you want, we can perform a little study with the follower options. What do you think about that?

Versión en español.

Joaquín Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)