A “typical” American farm

[Jonhinkerton]

Googling doesn’t really help me answer this question, but what does an average US farm look like today? I get the impression something like Welker is bigger than average, and the USDA says the average in acreage is 400ish, but no info on machinery. So, for a farm that does mainly grains somewhere west of the Mississippi:

how many workers?

How many tractors?

What kind of tools are owned vs. leased/borrowed as needed?

Combines, own or lease?

How is the grain moved, auger wagons to silos or wagons to trucks?

What trucks are owned vs hired?

Any info is appreciated, I am generally curious but it will certainly influence how I play FS.

[Illinois Farmer]

My farm is in northern Illinois, and it is operated by myself, brother, and my dad. We have now over 1280 acres with another 300ish custom work we do for other people. We have 3000 hogs, roughly 200 cattle at any time, 16 ewes and a ram. We own a 6 John Deere tractors (6150, 7250, 7800, 8130, 8335R, 6105R loader), we have one John Deere skid loader (323E maybe), 2 gators, 2 jd mowers (1023E, 1025R), and we own our S660 jd combine.
Then for equipment we own a chisel, disc and drag, jd planter, sabben sprayer, jd pull behind chopper with a corn head as well, a 1963 new Holland baler, 2 h&S forage wagons, 2 different types of blowers (1 for silage/hay-lage, 1 for corn), 3 Brent 544 wagons, 1 Brent 644 grain cart, 1 older grain truck, 1 backhoe, 1 manure spreader, 1 houle liquid tank, different buckets and pallet forks, and 4 hayracks for baling hay and straw.
We borrow the neighbors drill for wheat and pay a neighbor to come round bale for us.
We use the grain cart to a wagon and then a wagon to an auger to put corn into bins. Sometimes we have to run the corn through an dryer system. To sell, we use a friend's trucking company to haul for us and use a different company to haul the livestock. Sometimes we sell grain by taking a wagon to the elevator. We use that method with the beans. Hope that helps. We are small considering the guys around us.

[BoxTunnel]

We need a map of Illinois Farmer's farm. Sounds great!

[Ritchie]

Asking what a "typical" US farm is like is kinda like asking how long is a piece of string.
I'd recommend watching a few different YouTube farmers from the US and see how they do things but it really varies from farm to farm, no matter where you are in the world.

[Illinois Farmer]

Thanks boxtunnel. That would be cool. We have some cool aerial shots. I forgot we use the local co-op for anhydrous and spraying fungicide from the air.

[Jonhinkerton]

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff. Good thing your farm doesn’t have a slot count to deal with!

It’s interesting info though. I had been thinking that having 2 or 3 tractors and two medium combines was getting into the “big” farm hardware, but it sounds like that is more in line with average than I thought. It also underscores how much US machinery is absent from the (console) game still.

I live down in Florida so the agriculture I get to see from the roads is mostly cattle and orchards, some strawberry farms. I really can’t relate to grain farming.

[Riven326]

Check out Millenial Farmer on YouTube. He has some videos where he goes over all of his equipment, sheds, land, corn and soy, etc.

[Farmercaseih]

I farm in illinois and we have about 600 acres and we have a bunch of old farmalls and a few internationals. We also have a JI Case 1570, Case ih 3594, MX220, and a STX325 4wd. Our combine is a 1998 Case ih 2388 with a 30 ft 1020 grain head, and a 8 row 1083 corn head. Also, we have a ford L8000 grain truck, a bunch of DMI wagons, and one Brent 544. For tillage and planting we have a John deere ripper, DMI field cultivator, 2 IH 490 disks, a drag and a rolling basket. The planters are a 16 row case ih 1250, and a 15 row 15 inch case ih 950 cyclo. We do not have any employees.

[Jonhinkerton]

So if a console map is 2kmx2km that puts these two farms just on either side of filling the whole map. So maps like Welker and Dahl are more realistic as an average than expected.

Only one combine in each case as well. How long does it take to plant and harvest?

I suppose the idyllic one tractor farm just is not an economic reality.

[Illinois Farmer]

We can get planting done if the weather is well in like a week to week and a half. We can get harvest done roughly a few weeks depends on drying and the weather, but takes another few weeks to haul liquid and chisel the ground.

[Farmercaseih]

This year due to weather we planted all of our corn in about three days

[Jonhinkerton]

Meaning spraying and cultivating?

How realistic is the game’s two fertilizer passes and one weed pass after planting model? I guess many seed drills fertilize as well so it would be one spray of each, but the weed spray after planting always seemed odd to me, is it not?

Sounds like you also do pull a wagon to an elevator with a tractor sometimes. That always seemed another in-game practice that seemed unlikely to me, but maybe not? Is it more of a distance decision?

[Illinois Farmer]

We use anhydrous for 1 stage fertilizer (nitrogen), then plant, spray for weeds immediately after or spray before planting depending how busy the co-op is. Then myself or dad will use our sprayer in June to spray for weeds again and might have hit the beans in July or August again. We do arial spray for fungicide in July. After we harvest we put solid and liquid manure on bean and wheat ground for the next year. We have the co-op put lime down if needed seems solid fertilizer in needed. Our jd planter does not put any fertilizer down with it. The seed has insecticide coating on it and has rib complete genomes (better ears, wind resistance, drought resistence, etc).
Beans take longer than corn to harvest so it takes me about a half hr to the elevator in a tractor one way, but can haul 500 bushel a load. No need to pay someone else to haul the grain. If we were going further than yes we would truck it, like we do corn.

[iwan073]

That’s what we need in Farming Simulator; airplanes to spray the crops!

[NE Colorado Farmer]

Our family farm is pretty large, we farm about 5,300 irrigated acres and 5000 dryland acres. We farm mainly corn, wheat, and beans. Me and my brother work the farm along with 3 full time employees.

The equipment on the farm is three JD 9870 combines, three JD 612C headers, three Shelbourne 32' stripper headers, JD 9560R, JD 9560RT, JD 9630T, two JD 8360Rs, JD 8335R, JD 8330, JD 7520, JD 4930 sprayer, three JD 16 row CCS planters, JD 1895 air seeder, JD 455 drill, two Laney disc rippers, JD disc ripper, 43' Krause disc, 40' JD VT disc, 30' JD VT disc, 30' Sunflower chisel, two JD 49' chisel plows, Orthman 48' fallowmaster, Krause 16 row strip tiller, two Brent 1282 grain carts, Brent 1080 grain cart, and four Peterbilt trucks with Wilson grain trailers (and lots of smaller misc stuff but that list was getting too long).

During corn harvest we hire 4 guys for part time help and hire on 3 additional trucks. The grain gets hauled out of the fields by the carts to the trucks then it's either hauled to the bins or the elevator.