Grow my Own

From Cornburning

Unless you own farm equipment, or have a neighbor who does and is willing to help you out, the answer is to buy it. But, just to let you know some of the issues involved, here is the process and costs in growing corn. Additionally, here is one corn burner's experience growing corn.

To grow enough to make it worthwhile you will need at least three acres of land. One acre of land is 208x208 feet.

You will need to initally till the earth first with a plough to turn over the soil, then with an implement called a disk to chop the clods of soil into smaller chunks, then again with a harrow to pulverize the soil.

Once the earth is ready you will need a corn planter to plant the corn kernels. The corn planter also distributes fertilizer and pesticides at the same time it is planting.

When your corn is planted the work is not over. It is possible you will need to spray herbacide to kill weeds that would quickly choke out your newley growing corn. At the very least you will need to use a field cultivator to mechanically remove the weeds at least twice during the initial growing season until your corn grows tall enough to shade the area between the rows and not allow weeks to start.

Finally, you will need access to a combine to harvest the corn, or a corn picker to pick the full ears. If you do this, you will get much nicer corn and a greatly reduced drying cost. But, you will need a corn sheller to remove the kernels from the ears.

Some of these processes can be skipped. Some of these processes could be done manually (with a lot of work). But it is a lot to ask of one of your farming neighbors to just do all of it with their equipment, just so you can save a little money.

To give you some idea of the rough costs, to plant 3 acres of land:

*About 1 bushel of seed corn=$90
*Initial tilling = $30/acre
*Custom planting=$20/acre
*Fertilizer? $20/acre
*Spray and spraying $30/acre
*Combining $20-$30/acre
*Hauling $30
*Drying of corn assuming about 20% moisture = .02-.03/bu/point 125bu acre = $20 acre

Lets say you have a good year -- and that doesn't always happen. You will yeild about 100bu/acre. (Your yeild will be lower than bigger farmers because of many factors. Your losses due to end-row, soil compaction, pheasent, rabbit and deer loss, as well as all the other things will be of higher percentage of the total than larger farm operations)

Total for 3 acres or 300bu= $570 or $1.90/bu

If corn is selling for under three dollars a bushel, it isn't worth it for the work, stress, and potential for loss compared to just buying corn.

Conversely, maybe you want to become a hobby farmer and buy some equipment to farm your small plot of land.

Sometimes you can find small equipment that is too small for practical use by a real farmer. If you can get to it before a collector does you can sometimes get it for a fair price. Most John Deere stuff sells high because of this collector value. A small 2 cyl tractor can fetch over $3000. A John Deere 2 row corn planter would sell for about $1800. You still need all the other small implements, wagons, augers drying bins.

After a short time it would be easy to loose track of the fact that you are burning corn in order to save money.