I almost always do soy. I am so surprised to see that wheat and others brought more money. I guess I didn't think about the difference in the yield. Awesome video, thanks!
Yeah soy normally does much better than this, the price he used was way too low. The 3 grain crops that leave straw have similar profit per acre to each other (about $4100 per acre at base price on medium) but is the lowest as they make up for it with the straw, the other 4 grain crops have have higher profit per acre (about $5100 per acre) then comes cotton which makes almost double, potatoes and sugar beet which do make double, then sugar cane which makes quadruple the profit as soy/canola/corn/sunflower. Chaffing corn and making silage makes similar profit to sugar cane
There are other things that need to be taken in consideration. 1 - More yield means that you need to be be constantly unloading the harvester. That means you can't do anything else during the harvesting process. Other things that could also give you money. 2 - Potatoes, sugar-beet and sugarcane harvesters have a very small width. It takes FOREVER to harvest. I can harvest, seed and harvest soy again with the time it takes me to do potatoes/sugar-beet/sugarcane. 3 - Wheat, barley and oats are only significantly better than soy and canola if you sell the straw, but again, that takes time, and time is money.
Important to remember also that while wheat and barley may have marginal profits over oats, is that oats have significantly lower quantities, meaning less trips to the sale point / smaller trailers, so it's possible they are more profitable after considering those things. Another thing to consider is that crops require different seed volumes. For instance, oats, wheat and barley all need 500 liters per Ha, while soybeans only need 300 and canola 200, while potatoes need 3800 liters! At 0.9$ per liter, that's a difference of almost $3000 per Ha between potatoes and oats/wheat/barley, which for field 29 at 0.5 acres is about $1500, a not insignificant chunk of the profits. At that point, your main limiting factors become equipment like needing lots of plows running to keep high yields for root crops, as well as the limits of the harvesters. Since the root harvesters tend to be much slower, and have much higher volumes, you're limited to the land area you can harvest per time, hence limiting yield. For instance, since oats, canola, soy and cotton all have relatively low yield volumes, but much higher unit price, you could use multiple harvesters simultaneously while alternating the hopper across them, allowing you to harvest a much greater area and increasing yields, whereas for something like root crops you are limited by the fact that your tipper is quickly filled to capacity by the crop, not to mention that the root harvesters tend to be much slower at harvesting in general Only other thing to look at would be profitability for chaff, since I guess that would be pretty high but it would be interesting to compare it to sugarbeet/cane.
after playing for some time, i learned that effort = profit, so the higher the amount of effort you need to put into a crop, the more money it makes. Sugarcane has machines for planting and harvesting with tiny areas of work (1,2 meters for planter 1 and 3,2 meters for planter 2 iirc). Silage with grass is a 24/7 crop, and overwhelming with multiple big fields. And then you have sunflower, soy and canola which are the easiest to plant and harvest.
@@MagnumLoadedTractor if you dont plan on changing the crop, you can just lease a planter, plant sunflowers and not think about it. You dont have to deal with byproducts, its just sowing, fertilizing, harvesting, selling and repeat
I milk the system, so to speak. Every crop goes into the silo, as soon as it max's out I sell it to make the mulah. I plan when crops are down and sell when they are up. Good job on the video.
If time and the cost of equipment was a factor there is no chans any rootcrop would be anywhere close to the top. to recuperate the cost of the equipment u would need an above medium/big field if not it would take forever to get your money back. Even so i will never again harvest potatos/sugarbeat without a mod that adds working width.
And investment in seed. As different crops require different amount of seed per hectare and therefore have a different cost per hectare to grow them. For example potatoes require an insane amount of seed stock, soy requires not that much but more than wheat. Barley requires more than wheat but not a lot more.
@@jwenting Potatoes can be used to plant potatoes. As for seed, 200-500l of seed will get you 5000-8000l of product, and sugarcane is bought to plant at a cost below what you can sell it for.
Exactly. The reason why soybeans seam so profitable is because with oats, barley and wheat you need to have the straw sold before they are better than soybeans. Cotton is very slow to harvest. Potatoes, sugarcane and sugarbeets are a lot of work both plowing, sowing, harvesting and selling due to the endless drives from the field to sell point. Soybeans have a high price and low yield, so you don’t have to drive so much back and forth and it’s very easy to bang out a big field of beans instead of potatoes which in my experience takes up to 3-5 times longer than soybeans
@@FarmerCop I hear from others that sugarcane is even more insanely profitable when you factor in the fact that you can re-grow it without needing to till-and-drill every time.
@@Harmnmulder Agreed, but no one is suggesting that any crop species is without overhead. My bead on the overall game balance is that each crop type has at least one significant plus and alongside that a significant minus. Corn, for example, has the drawback of (assuming you play with all settings) requiring a full plow after every cycle. Its plus, conversely, is that it yields _insane_ quantities of forage / silage. My only point was that sugarcane's plus is that you theoretically only drill and cultivate once at the front end. Those front end costs of time / labor / vehicle maintenance / fuel / seed costs therefore trend toward closer to zero which each successive harvest. Costs of fertilizing / weeding / harvest remain normal, of course.
It was a good call to keep lime on. I haven't played on Felsbrun specifically, but if it's like most maps, all fields once they're purchased have the "needsLime" flag set to true. Turning off the game setting for lime prevents the lime-flag from reappearing after a certain number of harvests, but it cannot prevent the soil from needing that first bolt of lime immediately upon field purchase. And I think your intuition was correct, laying lime provides a productivity "boost" once you do it.
Thank you, that does make sense. Sometimes i view everything as a boost vs a deficir but in reality the way it is in game certain things boost yield while others are just a deficit if it is not done
Might be interesting to combine this with seed costs. I did run some planting science back when FS19 came out, with the following findings: Science: for seed use - Ravensport Field 12 (11.09 acres): - 446 liters - Oilseed Radish - 893 liters - Canola - 1339 liters - Grass, Sunflowers, Soybeans - 1785 liters - Corn, Sugar Beet - 2232 liters - Wheat, Barley, Oats, Cotton - 16962 liters - Potatoes What this shows is that Potatoes suck, though after the first harvest you can recycle the crop as seed, reducing your planting costs (though taking a hit on the profitability from sales). The Wheat, Barley, Oats and Cotton will remain consistent with each other as they cost the same to plant, but could end up competing with Potatoes due to the cost of potato seed. While the other crops will get a bump in profitability as the seed requirements drop. For a starting farmer, who may be cash poor after buying land and equipment, Canola may be the best starting crop as it costs the least per acre to plant, yield may not be the best - obviously, if you have the cash then it really doesn't matter which crop you plant. Oilseed radish is a very cheap fertilizer option, when compared with other forms, however it's growth is 1.5x other crops, so that is time spent not making income for your farm - I tend to skip OSR in normal game mode, because you make the most income with high turnover of fields. However, seasons, where you have "months" go by between harvest and planting, putting OSR in the ground can be very worthwhile, giving non-monetary benefit when you can't be actively growing cash!! The other factor for seasons is if you cannot afford a baler (or justify the cost of one), then there's no financial benefit from making straw. (I've wasted money buying or renting a baler and not covering that cost with the straw produced).
i think u missed out on an important variable. How much time u spent irl to sow harvest and all that on each crop. because even tough u might get less for some crops. sugarcane takes forever to harvest. The helper is bugged and it also takes forever to regrow. the upside is that u only have to resow it every 3rd harvest depenting on your settings. i mean it might be that during the time it takes to grow and harvest sugarcane u might have done 3-4 soybean harvests wich make it equally profitable. My point is the amount of time and work u put in should also been tested.
Also if im not mistaken the seed amount varies by different crop too. Imo its all kinda evenly balanced, except silage cuz thats always been #1. The more you have to put into a crop like time, fertilizer and expensive equipment the more you get out of it
not to mention the stupid money you spend on machinery, sugar cane is cool to have one a field you have extra and don't need that much, i would not advise to do on your starting field
I think in general play the lesson from this is diversify your crops as much as your equipment allows you to then you'll always have some crop to sell at a high price. I tend to plant a cereal crop in one field and canola/soy in a second field with corn/sunflowers in a third I guess if you can afford the potato/beet/sugarcane/cotton equipment you can do another field in those too. Once your harvests are in at least one of the crops will likely have a high price immediately the rest can sit in the silo / bunker until they're high.
It baffles me why the in game market prices arent simply effected by ALL players production and sales. Everyone selling soy? Price gets driven down, forcing us virtual farmers to adapt to a dynamic market place to survive. 👍🇬🇧🌾
@@CristiNeagu I think treating the FS comunity as one 'nation' economy would keep things simple, and would reflect to players whats being commonly produced and what is being less farmed at any given moment, hence an opportunity to fill a demand in the market.
As someone new to this game I found this very useful! Mostly that different crops have different yield volumes on the same sized field! Which is not something the game tells you nor I found easily till I saw this video! I kept doing soybeans because they had the highest prices per 1000L, but I knew it couldn't be that simple! Thanks!
I would agree with some comments here about factoring in equipment, seeds and labor. Sugarcane is great and regrows but requires pricey seeds, a long grow time and massive yield requires more / specialized transportation. Labor would be good to see too. The labor required to harvest sugarcane has to be at least 10x what is required for standard grains. Soy was in the middle, but using standard harvesting heads, plus less transportation significantly reduces cost. That all being said, great work!
Necro post but I been playing this ALOT. And, in terms of money to effort ratio. I go in this order for me.... 1. Cotton (hands-down, 93K a bale, 3 smallish fields) 2. Buying, then chopping down forests, plant one, while the other is being processed, get the autoloading trailer mod for semis. MUST have. 3. Soybeans. 4. Canola/Wheat worst case, if I'm bored.
on your chart the most valuable product is sugarcane money per field but it takes time and not comfortable to harvest.according to my results corn silage is less painful and valuable.Also this is a simulation game and there is no competition . my experiances says that " do what makes u happy" (after cheating :D)
Another amazing video - seriously, well done my dude! I can't wait to watch your content for FS22 when it comes out, you're by far the most educational and inspiring (you inspire me to play the game again every time) FarmingSimulator UA-camr there is!
Cool video. And surprising results. I never grew potatoes and sugar beets because it requires much more equipment. And I was also going by low sell prices. But I later realized the size of field matters after doing cotton. Which I sold one harvest for 128 grand from huge field. And I realized things like wheat and barley you get more from than say soybean or Sunflower from same field. Which may net you more.
Regardless of the individual crop prices, this is a great comparison of crop yield per area. Thanks for taking the time to do this, I've always wondered how they compare exactly!
Thanks for doing a test, while it can vary from map to map it still gives an indication as to what crops can earn. Also, when taking account of fertilizer costs, margins could be even smaller.
Thank you for this interesting video :-) I got approximately the same results when I did such a comparison two years ago. I find it very interesting, that soybeans get such a poor result, when so many people praise soybeans as a very lucrative crop.
They are a lucrative crop, they don't take a lot of space, so you can haul LARGE fields easily with one harvesting pass, unlike the grass crops where you need to get the straw, requiring fairly expensive trailers to carry a fairly small amount (unfortunately, you can't use a forage wagon to pick up straw any more). When starting out, ALWAYS USE WHEAT and pick up the straw. It gets you a lot of cash for quite a lot of work, but not as much as potatoes or beets or sugarcane, even when you use the half-million machines. Sugarcane falls down, as do poplars, because they take so long to grow, you don't get much per day, because growing takes more days. You move on to soybeans because you how have enough money and big enough fields so that you are more for value returned on energy invested. Picking up straw is less profitable than doing a harvest contract taking the same time, so if you wanted more profit, you'd dump straw and do contracts. Cotton's main saving grace is that it is easy to do yourself in-cab because there are very clear rows to follow. It only has a 6m header, so you can't earn as quick as you can with seed crops and a 45 foot header, but you can do it yourself REAL easy, whilst harvest headers you either need a large amount of overlap, wasting 5ft or more of header in empty air, or go third person. The biggest problem for saving time is the self fertilising sowers, both planters and seeders. You don't save any time, really, because you waste a lot of fertiliser on wasted ground, because unlike seed, fertiliser goes out over any ground, not just where it can plant a seed. So you have to take care or waste a lot of product. And what little time is saved you lose because you can't seed and fertilise over already fertilised ground, nor can you fertilise just planted seed, meaning you have to wait for a growth stage to happen to get the second fertilisation done. Without that direct drill and fertilise stage, you can cultivate, fertilise, seed then fertilise again, saving a LOT of time because you can do them immediately one after the other rather than having to wait.
@@markhackett2302 You're right when you count the amount of work and time as well. Soybean is very good, when you don't want to invest a lot of time and you have huge fields. But as you said, in the beginning, When you have few small fields, wheat is much better, mainly because of the straw.
Always do soy, it's price is getting up very often, I wait one day or less to sell up to 1700. For me it is profitable because less time to make the amount of money that the other cereals. And without less equipment to do straw.
Honestly it depends on your farm size sugar cane is a lot harder to automate at larger scales, I’d prefer cotton, it’s cheap to store, and if you have a truck with a crane on it and a flatbed trailer it’s easy to pick and transport 10 bales at a time.
America only an extra 30k if you use mods and a harvester for 9100 dollars got added to modhub the other day so for everything you're spending at least 60k for all the equipment excluding the land costs as long as you have some decent mods
Was expecting more from Oats. Also really thought Oats would give substantially more straw than Wheat or Barley. Surprising. Cost of seed for potatoes 🥔 eats into that profit too. Good video farmer cop.
Oats used to be VERY bad, like half Barley. It was only usable when used as horse feed. Cotton used to be real poor, too, about a third of the current price, and so most people didn't use it at all, it just was never worth it.
Oats price is actually a lot higher than the other cereal crops I think his average must have been at a bad time in-game. Price charts Im using I dont sell them for any less than Wheat: 800/kl Barley: 750/kl Oats: 1350/kl These prices have served me well, as you can see Oats is actually a lot higher per litre and by my math its the best gross profit crop (including straw) outside of root crops and cotton (which need expensive equipment) Note: These are my own average selling prices so its basically luck based but usually at least one market offers near to these prices
currently only planting and harvesting soybeans as i thought they make the most money. i used the two starting fields and after going over it with lime and two fertilizer runs i’ll get around 8000L of soybeans, which i usually hold until the price is around 1,600-1,700/1000L, and i’ll sell all of my soybeans. each modded trailer load (15000L) sells for 25,500 at 1,700 or 24,000 at 1,600. i guess i’ll have to rethink the basic wheat and barley and sell the straw bales
Hey Farmer Cop! Really interesting vid, Soy is my go to cash crop! 😂 Potatoes and Sugarbeet take an age to harvest through, so would be an interesting experiment to see what would happen over a longer period of time. Also equipment to buy/hire for Potatoes Cotton and Beet cost a lot more than a cheap harvester, would be good to look at costs incurred too.
Thank you :) same here i love doing soy haha. I agree i may go back and do a more detailed test at some point to incorpirate longer profitability and some of the additional costs
Still really surprised how much I learned from this channel let alone this video all because of the straw being worth money I’ve actually been doing bails too
Wait longer I've had over 3 k before now multiple times and wait for eggs to be above 5 k just push them into a pile and store soybeans in silos until ur price is right otherwise its all for nothing. And great demand doesn't always mean best price either.
@@rob1loxley Soybean over 3k sounds like economy on easy. I think this video is on normal economy which is 2/3 the price of easy. With hard being 1/3 the price of easy.
Theres a couple of things you forgot to factor in.....the price of seed and fertiliser. For instance, sugarcane uses a metric shit ton of seed, whereas canola uses very little. And fertiliser is hellish expensive. So your figures are gross returns, not profit. Still helpful figures to know, but not technically "profit" figures.
Very true. Potatoes and sugarcane that take more seed can be recycled to use as seed after the first harvest so after thatbthey are about the same cost
Sugarcane is high but it takes a long time for it to grow and to harvest. But sugarcane doesn't need to be replanted as often. Really so many variables. Farmer Cop you've done a great job!
The only problem of doing it this way is that the price fluctuates. I did the same thing with a page that tells you the middle price and then you have a 75% and the maximum value that crop can get. I did it for the basic crops, not taking into account potatoes, sugarcane, and all that. Also taking into consideration the amount of seeds they require (you need more soybeans seeds than canola for the same field for example). One thing I didn't really like about the straw producing crops is that the amount of straw is the same for all of them, I thought that a bigger yield in crop would relate to a bigger yield in straw, but that isn't the case. After all of that I found out that Oats (with straw) is the best, followed by Canola and then Soybeans. HOWEVER (and this is big) the price difference was about 2k which really amounts to nothing. So, taking into consideration the work you have to put in order to get to that price, I think Soybeans is slighty better than Canola and those two are better than oats. What I mean by this is that for Oats to be that high price you need to collect and sell that straw (whichever way you do it) and that takes time that could be used to sow another round of canola/soybeans, at the end of the day time means money. And soybeans is a little bit better than canola because of the lower yield, that means less trips with the tipper to and from the harvester and also to and from the silo and the selling point. I would stick to those three, I know sugarcane is the best but I don't really have the patience xD. Just wanted to share this with you, excellent video, I love them, keep up the good work =)
Oh, and I did this calculation with field 13. So in a much smaller field like 29 the difference would be much lower. Either way, I think you should do the crop you like best. I just like Canola because it's black hahaha
Thank you for sharing all that that makes a huge difference, time wise if you have animals ect around the farm soy is great because it does not take the time you need for caring for your animals for examlple, very good points and sugarcane is very labor intensive haha :)
Yup. If you are starting out, oats canola soy & sunflowers will let you get away with smaller tippers, and by proxy, smaller tractors which reduces lease fees or up front costs. The top payers require EXPENSIVE specialized equipment, which means a bigger impact if the market for them crashes and much higher operating/upfront expenses. They also have narrow work fields for harvesting, which means more time/labor investment and slower turnarounds.
Is there a difference between loading wagon straw and bale straw prices? Edit: Because baling is alot more work, especially when stacking without an auto stacker
@@FarmerCop I think I would enjoy bales alot more, but as much as I tell myself not to I will alway go for the most valuable option. Thank you for helping and I wish you luck.
The main difference is how much you can load into/on the pick-up device. A trailer can hold n number of bails, and each bail is about 4,000 litters. A loading wagon does not hold bales, yet it can be compared to it. So a trailer that can hold 16 bales can hold 64,000 litters (16 bales x 4,000 litters per bale) vs. 35,000 litters or so for a loading wagon. Just remember that it takes two passes if you are using a trailer (one pass with the baler to bale it, then the second to pick it up), and only one for the loading wagon. With a mod like Follow Me or Course Play it may not matter to you.
Wheat,Barley,Oats have an extra step attached to them which is very time consuming. Collecting the Straw or making bales. It takes hours. Soyabeans are rhe easiest in my opinion.
Sugar beets are pretty good when the price hits $450 per 1000. I have the modded silo that holds 1.5 Mil liters so I just fill that up and wait on the prices.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I would add that sugar cane takes a long time to grow, and to harvest. So, how many times could you grow and harvest something else (like oats) in that same amount of time? Maybe that's a reason you get so much money from it???
Sugarcane with (2) 32,400l mod grain trailer that can attach to Case sugar cane harvester, it will run until trailer is full and harvest 99 percent if headland is open. Only take is no notification of full trailer. I like to swap with empty while I go to offload and manage to keep seamless flow
How about cost per time unit? - if it takes twice as long to harvest potatoes than to bring in Oats for example, what then is the profitability? - imo profit is time based
Slow and boring, but i agree, silage is the way to go. Make a field big enough for 200 bales of grass (max limit on console), or more, i have 2 currently. Grab a decent tractor, maybe 500hp. I downloaded the mod for the base game mower with ability to swath, but theres one in the dlc pack if you dont want to use it, same thing (almost). With the modded one, you can attach both mower parts to the front, and the fast baler to the rear. At good prices (easy economy), 200 bales = 500k plus. Not a good price that day? Mow it anyway. Grass stays on the field in that swath. 2 days of mowing and youll harvest at about 5km an hour, but itll be worth 1m+. Not a good price the second day? Repeat as long as necessary. Would 100% recommend both the mod mower and mod autoloading round bale trailer (holds 54), as well as more than one tractor mowing/baling at a time, but up to you. 90% automated process, all you have to do is transport the bales, can do whatever else you like while you wait.
Just for fun: The Helper will plant not less than 231 !! Trees on field 29, which sale for about 2900 each (on easy). At least you make 680.000 of it. Now we need silage and popplers value and were complete.
Wish they would put names underneth the crop icons in the prices list, I bought this game for my girlfriend she played 15 mins of it and hasn't played it since. I started it got addicted but started again and then lost that buzz
I cashed in all my sunflowers (158k liters) for 1,400ish an received over 352K took some to build up that much but was worth it than bought a sugar beet harvester and gathered 1.5mil litters in a single harvest (field 8 ravenport) and struggling to sell it for the price I’m aiming for, haven’t tried cotton yet and that may be my next big buy for a machine cause I want the expensive John Deere one lol
Id like to know total profit vs expense. Like for example. How many liters of seed needed for each crop type to seed specific field. Dollar amount per hour. Cost of machines. That would be time consuming but i just feel like machines that only do potatos or only sugar beet or only sugarcane are the most expensive. Then storage, if you dont intend on just dumping it on the ground, also in most cases costs extra. What it all comes down to is probably everything makes the same amount of money, just depends on what time you sell it.
Are the grow times the same for each crop in your test,? And if so/ not, would you profit more from doing wheat twice if it grew faster than say sugar cane and what is the harvesting times for crops? Can you harvest two fields of wheat faster than one field of sugarcane? Ect ect....
The results are surprising. However I still believe if you have a bigger field then cotton will always be the winner. As it’s the best paying crop that takes the less time. Compared to Root crops and sugarcane which are slower processes
@@FarmerCop A 45 foot header at 6mph beats out a 20 foot (6m) header at 6mph or even 9mph (if you were using a helianthus) Corn maxes out at 12m (40ft), as does the helianthus (40ft again). Corn wants ploughing, though. On a BIG field, you may find it worth not bothering with ploughing if you're going with silage, and cropping at the last growing stage to save time.
I’m curious to know if the cost the same to plant your standard grains. Amount of seed used to plant the same? I assume it will be different which can Drastically change the profits.
Seed goes from 500l per hectare down to 200l per hectare, but seed costs 1000 per litre and what you get per hectare is higher for wheat than it is for soybeans, so to a large extent, it evens out. Even if it did, you get 5-8,000 litres per hectare, making the 2-500l difference meaningless in scale.
Seeds will change the price a bit but like Mark said it wont be drastic. There are so many factors to consider when deciding the best crop fpr your farm
@@FarmerCop except for root crops, where the amount of seed needed goes through the roof (especially for potatoes). Personally, I try to figure out what would be grown in the region the map portrays irl and stick to those crops. And then I tend to play with seasons and you end up with sometimes complex crop rotations.
@@jwenting Beets use seed, so wrong there. Potatoes can use potatoes, so wrong there, except in the start-off, and you can keep contract output for that, and the payout for potatoes assume you will be paying for seed, not using potatoes. Oh, and sugarcane you convert to seed in the planter, and it is cheaper than the sale price in normal, so you can make some bank just buying sugarcane pallets at 140 per thousand and selling for anywhere up to 250 per thousand.
Sugarcane looks like the worst. 100k litres from that tiny field means shipping that stuff around in bulk. It's already bad enough dealing with taters and beets but sugarcane is crazy. Cotton was my biggest surprise from all this although it's a bit of an odd one since you can only sell in chunks that match the bales so smaller fields can go entire harvests without any saleable crop.
Can you do a test to see what the most profitable log length per price is to sell to lumber mills? I did a bit of testing a while back and had findings suggesting that 7m and 8m were the highest selling prices, but I could be wrong. If your want to test it and see what you get, a great way to test this would be to have a saved game with a single tree that's fully grown. Then you could use a tree harvester and cut the tree into all the various lengths available (I recommend using the Ponsse Buffalo Dual since it can cut trees into log lengths of 1m - 15m) and then transport each piece of the same tree to the log sell points. Start with a whole tree (branches not trimmed), then a bare tree,) then go down the line starting with 1m. Once you record a sell price, reload and test the next length. Bonus: See if each log size differs in yield if you send them through woodchippers. I've often wondered if it is more profitable to sell trees in long log lengths or to simply chip them instead of selling as logs.
Very true, silage would have added in a lot of additional factors to consider as I would have had to test most crops again as most can be whole cropped so I did not want to run that in this video
I'd love a comparison which includes weeds, lime, and fertilizer. Yes, a *big* table :D "Do it yourself!". Well, yeah, that's a fair suggestion. Too lazy ;-)
it takes about 3 days for sugarcane to be fully grown, and ready for harvest. What about time it takes to grow? How is this an accurate representation of most profitable crop?
@@FarmerCop doens't it have a 1m working width and need an additional 100hp tractor? I'm not crapping on your results they are really useful if you have all the equipment already. A good follow up video might be which crop makes more money for the time and initial outlay. A crop might not be as enticing if it takes four times as long and costs twice as much to harvest and takes twice as long to grow
@@cmotdibbler4454 very true and i definitely agree with you, all of the higher yield crops such as cotton, sugarbeets, potatoes, sugarcane defjnitely require a lot more effort and in general more expensive equilment
Interesting. I play on lone oak map with seasons and with the fields I have now I make the most with soybeans, canola is second, then corn, and then wheat, barley and oats. Haven't tried the other crops yet 🤔
I think you might have under-valued canola, I think a better average would have been 1500 or higher. thats what I usually see it around. Great info though!
Volume brings time you spend working, i would like to know how much time you spend on all the crops. If you toulk 5 times as much time for sugarrbeets comparing to another crop you could earn money faster with replanting a smaller yeild crop. In a real world you can apply this theory, in game world where you can manipulate crop growt time you have to account for real time spent also.
Very true, harvesting time potato, sugarcane or beet take all the long and travels for storage. I rather spend the time raid my horses or cutting some trees 😏
Profit per hour is a video game term. Unless you are in Texas or someplace where you can double crop certain crops you can only grow one crop per field per year. Also planting your entire farm to soybeans and doing that "year" after "year" is not realistic. Crops need to be rotated.
when you are starting just from the Beginning and who are new to games and will have that headers for only couple of crop Canola is a best option and after getting the baling tech wheat and barley is a best option.
Thanks for the video! I was just wondering this the other day. But now I'm curious, what about efficiency? For example the ones that paid high (cotton, potatoes, sugar beets) they take much longer to plant, and harvest than the others. So.. when you factor a full cycle in, what is the best profit per hour crop?
@@beegekhaos3171 It depends. corn produces more biomass which is better for vanilla. With seasons it's best to mix it so you can harvest twice per year and don't have to deal with crop rotation. I actually change wheat for corn every other season cause i need the straw for my cattle. If you need hay for TMR produce silage, sell some of it, buy hay at the shop and earn a litte money.
hybrid9mm I actually just got my first harvest done and really enjoyed it. I can definitely see how it would get boring though, especially if you’re doing a lot of it
If you look online there's a few price charts that have the maximum prices on them, pretty sure it's a hard limit so it won't go past them. Recalculatin em 1. Sugarcane: 50,516 2. Potato: 28,416 3. Sugarbeet: 28,206 4. Cotton: 24,912 5. Oat: 12,842 + 6,024 = 18,866 6. Wheat: 12,011 + 6,035 = 18,046 7. Barley: 12,003 + 6,018 = 18,021 8. Soy: 14,016 9. Sunflower: 14,011 10. Corn: 13,999 11. Canola: 13,997 Wonder if mods like maizeplus and whatever the one that adds extra strawtypes balance it a little more
First comment - yay! :D By the way, does any of you play "Age of Empires II"? There is a UA-camr "Spirit of the Law" that analyzes all the stuff and numbers there. Farmer Cop is the same for FS19! Another interesting and useful test video. Can't wait to see more - as always! :)
From my experience baling and wrapping grass makes the most money. Fast to regrow and no need to reseed.
Very true, silage is a great way to earn money
@@FarmerCop or hay :) depends on price. Daily price always change. 😁
Horses are best.
From what i have tested silage from corn is a bit more profitable. But i have never try horses.
@@mjmj1328 you build one Horse for 2500. And Shell It for 50 000. And are very easy to maintenance. Water is free in River, lake, and sea.
I almost always do soy. I am so surprised to see that wheat and others brought more money. I guess I didn't think about the difference in the yield. Awesome video, thanks!
Especially when prices for soy get up to $3000+ 1kL
I plant soy too, my game soy prices are 2800~3000
i used to grow soy on fs17 but in fs19 i prefer canola. Its a simple crop and pays more than soy
Yeah soy normally does much better than this, the price he used was way too low. The 3 grain crops that leave straw have similar profit per acre to each other (about $4100 per acre at base price on medium) but is the lowest as they make up for it with the straw, the other 4 grain crops have have higher profit per acre (about $5100 per acre) then comes cotton which makes almost double, potatoes and sugar beet which do make double, then sugar cane which makes quadruple the profit as soy/canola/corn/sunflower. Chaffing corn and making silage makes similar profit to sugar cane
There are other things that need to be taken in consideration.
1 - More yield means that you need to be be constantly unloading the harvester. That means you can't do anything else during the harvesting process. Other things that could also give you money.
2 - Potatoes, sugar-beet and sugarcane harvesters have a very small width. It takes FOREVER to harvest. I can harvest, seed and harvest soy again with the time it takes me to do potatoes/sugar-beet/sugarcane.
3 - Wheat, barley and oats are only significantly better than soy and canola if you sell the straw, but again, that takes time, and time is money.
Important to remember also that while wheat and barley may have marginal profits over oats, is that oats have significantly lower quantities, meaning less trips to the sale point / smaller trailers, so it's possible they are more profitable after considering those things.
Another thing to consider is that crops require different seed volumes. For instance, oats, wheat and barley all need 500 liters per Ha, while soybeans only need 300 and canola 200, while potatoes need 3800 liters! At 0.9$ per liter, that's a difference of almost $3000 per Ha between potatoes and oats/wheat/barley, which for field 29 at 0.5 acres is about $1500, a not insignificant chunk of the profits.
At that point, your main limiting factors become equipment like needing lots of plows running to keep high yields for root crops, as well as the limits of the harvesters. Since the root harvesters tend to be much slower, and have much higher volumes, you're limited to the land area you can harvest per time, hence limiting yield. For instance, since oats, canola, soy and cotton all have relatively low yield volumes, but much higher unit price, you could use multiple harvesters simultaneously while alternating the hopper across them, allowing you to harvest a much greater area and increasing yields, whereas for something like root crops you are limited by the fact that your tipper is quickly filled to capacity by the crop, not to mention that the root harvesters tend to be much slower at harvesting in general
Only other thing to look at would be profitability for chaff, since I guess that would be pretty high but it would be interesting to compare it to sugarbeet/cane.
after playing for some time, i learned that effort = profit, so the higher the amount of effort you need to put into a crop, the more money it makes. Sugarcane has machines for planting and harvesting with tiny areas of work (1,2 meters for planter 1 and 3,2 meters for planter 2 iirc). Silage with grass is a 24/7 crop, and overwhelming with multiple big fields. And then you have sunflower, soy and canola which are the easiest to plant and harvest.
I'd say soybeans is easier than sunflower cause sunflowers can only be sown with planters while soybeans can be sown with seeder and planters
@@MagnumLoadedTractor if you dont plan on changing the crop, you can just lease a planter, plant sunflowers and not think about it. You dont have to deal with byproducts, its just sowing, fertilizing, harvesting, selling and repeat
I milk the system, so to speak. Every crop goes into the silo, as soon as it max's out I sell it to make the mulah. I plan when crops are down and sell when they are up. Good job on the video.
Thank you! And thats a good way to do it haha :)
That’s just called being smart lol
i didnt even think about this, its so simple, im just rlly impatient lol
This needed another couple columns, time invested and profit per hour.
The goal of this test was just to see what the yield and money earned would be in a specific area
If time and the cost of equipment was a factor there is no chans any rootcrop would be anywhere close to the top. to recuperate the cost of the equipment u would need an above medium/big field if not it would take forever to get your money back. Even so i will never again harvest potatos/sugarbeat without a mod that adds working width.
And investment in seed. As different crops require different amount of seed per hectare and therefore have a different cost per hectare to grow them.
For example potatoes require an insane amount of seed stock, soy requires not that much but more than wheat.
Barley requires more than wheat but not a lot more.
@@jwenting Potatoes can be used to plant potatoes. As for seed, 200-500l of seed will get you 5000-8000l of product, and sugarcane is bought to plant at a cost below what you can sell it for.
Exactly. The reason why soybeans seam so profitable is because with oats, barley and wheat you need to have the straw sold before they are better than soybeans. Cotton is very slow to harvest. Potatoes, sugarcane and sugarbeets are a lot of work both plowing, sowing, harvesting and selling due to the endless drives from the field to sell point. Soybeans have a high price and low yield, so you don’t have to drive so much back and forth and it’s very easy to bang out a big field of beans instead of potatoes which in my experience takes up to 3-5 times longer than soybeans
I was pretty shocked about the Sugarcane winning out. That volume is impressive. Great informative video!
Thank you!
@@FarmerCop I hear from others that sugarcane is even more insanely profitable when you factor in the fact that you can re-grow it without needing to till-and-drill every time.
All about yield plus you don't have to replant it so that comes into play cost wise too
Keep in mind that ugarcane does earn the most, but it costs twice the amount of time to grow and harvesting it also costs much time...
@@Harmnmulder Agreed, but no one is suggesting that any crop species is without overhead.
My bead on the overall game balance is that each crop type has at least one significant plus and alongside that a significant minus.
Corn, for example, has the drawback of (assuming you play with all settings) requiring a full plow after every cycle. Its plus, conversely, is that it yields _insane_ quantities of forage / silage.
My only point was that sugarcane's plus is that you theoretically only drill and cultivate once at the front end. Those front end costs of time / labor / vehicle maintenance / fuel / seed costs therefore trend toward closer to zero which each successive harvest. Costs of fertilizing / weeding / harvest remain normal, of course.
It was a good call to keep lime on. I haven't played on Felsbrun specifically, but if it's like most maps, all fields once they're purchased have the "needsLime" flag set to true. Turning off the game setting for lime prevents the lime-flag from reappearing after a certain number of harvests, but it cannot prevent the soil from needing that first bolt of lime immediately upon field purchase. And I think your intuition was correct, laying lime provides a productivity "boost" once you do it.
Thank you, that does make sense. Sometimes i view everything as a boost vs a deficir but in reality the way it is in game certain things boost yield while others are just a deficit if it is not done
Might be interesting to combine this with seed costs. I did run some planting science back when FS19 came out, with the following findings:
Science: for seed use - Ravensport Field 12 (11.09 acres):
- 446 liters - Oilseed Radish
- 893 liters - Canola
- 1339 liters - Grass, Sunflowers, Soybeans
- 1785 liters - Corn, Sugar Beet
- 2232 liters - Wheat, Barley, Oats, Cotton
- 16962 liters - Potatoes
What this shows is that Potatoes suck, though after the first harvest you can recycle the crop as seed, reducing your planting costs (though taking a hit on the profitability from sales). The Wheat, Barley, Oats and Cotton will remain consistent with each other as they cost the same to plant, but could end up competing with Potatoes due to the cost of potato seed. While the other crops will get a bump in profitability as the seed requirements drop.
For a starting farmer, who may be cash poor after buying land and equipment, Canola may be the best starting crop as it costs the least per acre to plant, yield may not be the best - obviously, if you have the cash then it really doesn't matter which crop you plant.
Oilseed radish is a very cheap fertilizer option, when compared with other forms, however it's growth is 1.5x other crops, so that is time spent not making income for your farm - I tend to skip OSR in normal game mode, because you make the most income with high turnover of fields. However, seasons, where you have "months" go by between harvest and planting, putting OSR in the ground can be very worthwhile, giving non-monetary benefit when you can't be actively growing cash!! The other factor for seasons is if you cannot afford a baler (or justify the cost of one), then there's no financial benefit from making straw. (I've wasted money buying or renting a baler and not covering that cost with the straw produced).
Neil this is fantastic information thank you for taking the time to comment and put it out there for people I really appreciate it
You can buy pallets of potatoes and use them instead of seeds for first planting it cuts the costs a lot
i think u missed out on an important variable. How much time u spent irl to sow harvest and all that on each crop. because even tough u might get less for some crops. sugarcane takes forever to harvest. The helper is bugged and it also takes forever to regrow. the upside is that u only have to resow it every 3rd harvest depenting on your settings. i mean it might be that during the time it takes to grow and harvest sugarcane u might have done 3-4 soybean harvests wich make it equally profitable. My point is the amount of time and work u put in should also been tested.
Also if im not mistaken the seed amount varies by different crop too. Imo its all kinda evenly balanced, except silage cuz thats always been #1. The more you have to put into a crop like time, fertilizer and expensive equipment the more you get out of it
not to mention the stupid money you spend on machinery, sugar cane is cool to have one a field you have extra and don't need that much, i would not advise to do on your starting field
I think in general play the lesson from this is diversify your crops as much as your equipment allows you to then you'll always have some crop to sell at a high price.
I tend to plant a cereal crop in one field and canola/soy in a second field with corn/sunflowers in a third
I guess if you can afford the potato/beet/sugarcane/cotton equipment you can do another field in those too.
Once your harvests are in at least one of the crops will likely have a high price immediately the rest can sit in the silo / bunker until they're high.
I just sow all fields with one crop(excluding root crops grass and oilseed radish and corn for silage)and rotate each time
It baffles me why the in game market prices arent simply effected by ALL players production and sales. Everyone selling soy? Price gets driven down, forcing us virtual farmers to adapt to a dynamic market place to survive. 👍🇬🇧🌾
Good point! I would love to see this in fs 22!
Would love this in 22 too. Maybe there is, if it won't be in vanilla, a possibility to make this a mod?
A nice idea, but should all maps then have the same prices? Or should it be segregated by map?
@@CristiNeagu I think treating the FS comunity as one 'nation' economy would keep things simple, and would reflect to players whats being commonly produced and what is being less farmed at any given moment, hence an opportunity to fill a demand in the market.
This would be awsome
As someone new to this game I found this very useful! Mostly that different crops have different yield volumes on the same sized field! Which is not something the game tells you nor I found easily till I saw this video! I kept doing soybeans because they had the highest prices per 1000L, but I knew it couldn't be that simple! Thanks!
ive been playing since 2015 and never knew it either, i thought i was so smart only doing soybeans
I would agree with some comments here about factoring in equipment, seeds and labor. Sugarcane is great and regrows but requires pricey seeds, a long grow time and massive yield requires more / specialized transportation. Labor would be good to see too. The labor required to harvest sugarcane has to be at least 10x what is required for standard grains. Soy was in the middle, but using standard harvesting heads, plus less transportation significantly reduces cost.
That all being said, great work!
Definitely agree, definitely more factors to consider :)
Necro post but I been playing this ALOT. And, in terms of money to effort ratio. I go in this order for me.... 1. Cotton (hands-down, 93K a bale, 3 smallish fields) 2. Buying, then chopping down forests, plant one, while the other is being processed, get the autoloading trailer mod for semis. MUST have. 3. Soybeans. 4. Canola/Wheat worst case, if I'm bored.
on your chart the most valuable product is sugarcane money per field but it takes time and not comfortable to harvest.according to my results corn silage is less painful and valuable.Also this is a simulation game and there is no competition . my experiances says that " do what makes u happy" (after cheating :D)
Another amazing video - seriously, well done my dude! I can't wait to watch your content for FS22 when it comes out, you're by far the most educational and inspiring (you inspire me to play the game again every time) FarmingSimulator UA-camr there is!
Thank you :)
Dude this is so good.
Cool video. And surprising results. I never grew potatoes and sugar beets because it requires much more equipment. And I was also going by low sell prices. But I later realized the size of field matters after doing cotton. Which I sold one harvest for 128 grand from huge field. And I realized things like wheat and barley you get more from than say soybean or Sunflower from same field. Which may net you more.
Regardless of the individual crop prices, this is a great comparison of crop yield per area. Thanks for taking the time to do this, I've always wondered how they compare exactly!
You are welcome Nick! And that is the beauty of it you can plug in whatever prices you want into the table now :)
Thanks for doing a test, while it can vary from map to map it still gives an indication as to what crops can earn. Also, when taking account of fertilizer costs, margins could be even smaller.
You are welcome! Very true,the yield numbers can hopefully be applied to other situations to help decide the best crops tp do
Just as I thought. Wheat, with its lowest price, is the leader among the basic crops, due to higher yield. Soy fooled me...
Thanks for the research.
so glad people are still uploading this game
I love FS19 as much now as I did when it came out, well actually I love it more now
Farmer Cop looking forward to you posting more man
Thank you for this interesting video :-) I got approximately the same results when I did such a comparison two years ago. I find it very interesting, that soybeans get such a poor result, when so many people praise soybeans as a very lucrative crop.
Same here! I used to do soy all the time but i may have to change my ways
Oma Tana! Nice to see you. :)
They are a lucrative crop, they don't take a lot of space, so you can haul LARGE fields easily with one harvesting pass, unlike the grass crops where you need to get the straw, requiring fairly expensive trailers to carry a fairly small amount (unfortunately, you can't use a forage wagon to pick up straw any more). When starting out, ALWAYS USE WHEAT and pick up the straw. It gets you a lot of cash for quite a lot of work, but not as much as potatoes or beets or sugarcane, even when you use the half-million machines. Sugarcane falls down, as do poplars, because they take so long to grow, you don't get much per day, because growing takes more days.
You move on to soybeans because you how have enough money and big enough fields so that you are more for value returned on energy invested. Picking up straw is less profitable than doing a harvest contract taking the same time, so if you wanted more profit, you'd dump straw and do contracts.
Cotton's main saving grace is that it is easy to do yourself in-cab because there are very clear rows to follow. It only has a 6m header, so you can't earn as quick as you can with seed crops and a 45 foot header, but you can do it yourself REAL easy, whilst harvest headers you either need a large amount of overlap, wasting 5ft or more of header in empty air, or go third person.
The biggest problem for saving time is the self fertilising sowers, both planters and seeders. You don't save any time, really, because you waste a lot of fertiliser on wasted ground, because unlike seed, fertiliser goes out over any ground, not just where it can plant a seed. So you have to take care or waste a lot of product. And what little time is saved you lose because you can't seed and fertilise over already fertilised ground, nor can you fertilise just planted seed, meaning you have to wait for a growth stage to happen to get the second fertilisation done. Without that direct drill and fertilise stage, you can cultivate, fertilise, seed then fertilise again, saving a LOT of time because you can do them immediately one after the other rather than having to wait.
@@markhackett2302 You're right when you count the amount of work and time as well. Soybean is very good, when you don't want to invest a lot of time and you have huge fields. But as you said, in the beginning, When you have few small fields, wheat is much better, mainly because of the straw.
Always do soy, it's price is getting up very often, I wait one day or less to sell up to 1700. For me it is profitable because less time to make the amount of money that the other cereals. And without less equipment to do straw.
Honestly it depends on your farm size sugar cane is a lot harder to automate at larger scales, I’d prefer cotton, it’s cheap to store, and if you have a truck with a crane on it and a flatbed trailer it’s easy to pick and transport 10 bales at a time.
Technically trees make the best money, second to poplars and sugarcane.
Really good info here thanks! I'm shocked that soybeans and canola are so low! Looks like I need to plant good old wheat and sugarcane! Who knew lol
Awesome Video! Always been interested in knowing this! Keep them coming! :)
There’s a BGA on modhub that pays 900 per 1000 litres for potato’s and sugar beets so that’s some serious money there
Grass I found. At least for 17. You make silage bales and sell. Made more off that than any other crop.
Very very true, silage is a a big go to for me to make money
Oats is probably the best since it's nearly as expensive as canola and it gives you straw
Very true, that straw tips it into a good price range
America only an extra 30k if you use mods and a harvester for 9100 dollars got added to modhub the other day so for everything you're spending at least 60k for all the equipment excluding the land costs as long as you have some decent mods
America I'm on console so yea not having the same mods as I do shouldn't be an issue
I think corn cuz you can also turn it into Silage
Yearly is way less tho
Was expecting more from Oats. Also really thought Oats would give substantially more straw than Wheat or Barley. Surprising.
Cost of seed for potatoes 🥔 eats into that profit too.
Good video farmer cop.
Oats used to be VERY bad, like half Barley. It was only usable when used as horse feed.
Cotton used to be real poor, too, about a third of the current price, and so most people didn't use it at all, it just was never worth it.
Same here i thoughts would do better. Very true potatoes ckst a boatload to plant unless you are using potatoes from a previous harvest haha
Oats price is actually a lot higher than the other cereal crops I think his average must have been at a bad time in-game.
Price charts Im using I dont sell them for any less than
Wheat: 800/kl
Barley: 750/kl
Oats: 1350/kl
These prices have served me well, as you can see Oats is actually a lot higher per litre and by my math its the best gross profit crop (including straw) outside of root crops and cotton (which need expensive equipment)
Note: These are my own average selling prices so its basically luck based but usually at least one market offers near to these prices
currently only planting and harvesting soybeans as i thought they make the most money. i used the two starting fields and after going over it with lime and two fertilizer runs i’ll get around 8000L of soybeans, which i usually hold until the price is around 1,600-1,700/1000L, and i’ll sell all of my soybeans. each modded trailer load (15000L) sells for 25,500 at 1,700 or 24,000 at 1,600. i guess i’ll have to rethink the basic wheat and barley and sell the straw bales
Hey Farmer Cop! Really interesting vid, Soy is my go to cash crop! 😂 Potatoes and Sugarbeet take an age to harvest through, so would be an interesting experiment to see what would happen over a longer period of time. Also equipment to buy/hire for Potatoes Cotton and Beet cost a lot more than a cheap harvester, would be good to look at costs incurred too.
Thank you :) same here i love doing soy haha. I agree i may go back and do a more detailed test at some point to incorpirate longer profitability and some of the additional costs
On stone valley seasons my rotation:
160 acres: spring beans- winter oats- double crop beans
195 acres: corn on corn.
Still really surprised how much I learned from this channel let alone this video all because of the straw being worth money I’ve actually been doing bails too
Furry
@@madman1532 yes
@@madman1532 what about it xd
Next question. What about the time it takes to harvest it all with the best machine setup???
I wait for the soy to reach the price of 1800-2000 per one thousand liters, otherwise it's kind of wasted
That is true, I do that to if I have some is wait for a good price
Wait longer I've had over 3 k before now multiple times and wait for eggs to be above 5 k just push them into a pile and store soybeans in silos until ur price is right otherwise its all for nothing. And great demand doesn't always mean best price either.
@@rob1loxley Soybean over 3k sounds like economy on easy. I think this video is on normal economy which is 2/3 the price of easy. With hard being 1/3 the price of easy.
Theres a couple of things you forgot to factor in.....the price of seed and fertiliser. For instance, sugarcane uses a metric shit ton of seed, whereas canola uses very little. And fertiliser is hellish expensive. So your figures are gross returns, not profit. Still helpful figures to know, but not technically "profit" figures.
Very true. Potatoes and sugarcane that take more seed can be recycled to use as seed after the first harvest so after thatbthey are about the same cost
Sugarcane is high but it takes a long time for it to grow and to harvest. But sugarcane doesn't need to be replanted as often. Really so many variables. Farmer Cop you've done a great job!
Amen to that tons of variables haha to consider when trying to decide the best crop to do for a farm
how much did it cost to seed and fertilize the field? isnt this just revenue and not profit?
Just another thing to think about. Sugarcane can be harvested 3 times before needing to prep the field again for lime and plowing.
Thank you man you are one of the greatest fs players I’ve seen and thank you for your time
Thank you :)
The only problem of doing it this way is that the price fluctuates. I did the same thing with a page that tells you the middle price and then you have a 75% and the maximum value that crop can get. I did it for the basic crops, not taking into account potatoes, sugarcane, and all that. Also taking into consideration the amount of seeds they require (you need more soybeans seeds than canola for the same field for example). One thing I didn't really like about the straw producing crops is that the amount of straw is the same for all of them, I thought that a bigger yield in crop would relate to a bigger yield in straw, but that isn't the case. After all of that I found out that Oats (with straw) is the best, followed by Canola and then Soybeans. HOWEVER (and this is big) the price difference was about 2k which really amounts to nothing. So, taking into consideration the work you have to put in order to get to that price, I think Soybeans is slighty better than Canola and those two are better than oats. What I mean by this is that for Oats to be that high price you need to collect and sell that straw (whichever way you do it) and that takes time that could be used to sow another round of canola/soybeans, at the end of the day time means money. And soybeans is a little bit better than canola because of the lower yield, that means less trips with the tipper to and from the harvester and also to and from the silo and the selling point. I would stick to those three, I know sugarcane is the best but I don't really have the patience xD. Just wanted to share this with you, excellent video, I love them, keep up the good work =)
Oh, and I did this calculation with field 13. So in a much smaller field like 29 the difference would be much lower. Either way, I think you should do the crop you like best. I just like Canola because it's black hahaha
Thank you for sharing all that that makes a huge difference, time wise if you have animals ect around the farm soy is great because it does not take the time you need for caring for your animals for examlple, very good points and sugarcane is very labor intensive haha :)
@@FarmerCop Yes that's why I relly love soybeans and canola. And yeah, sugarcane is a LOT OF WORK xD
Real good vid bro like how i have 25682 k soya beans and haven't toched them yet,
Btw you'r intro is insane!!!
Keep it up.
Thanks!
Yup. If you are starting out, oats canola soy & sunflowers will let you get away with smaller tippers, and by proxy, smaller tractors which reduces lease fees or up front costs. The top payers require EXPENSIVE specialized equipment, which means a bigger impact if the market for them crashes and much higher operating/upfront expenses. They also have narrow work fields for harvesting, which means more time/labor investment and slower turnarounds.
First video I’ve ever seen from you but I love these types of vids. Have a sub :)
Thank you and welcome to the channel :)
It’ll be neat to see the full economic impact charts with the Precision Farming DLC.
Is there a difference between loading wagon straw and bale straw prices?
Edit: Because baling is alot more work, especially when stacking without an auto stacker
As far as money earned nope, bales or loose in a wagon will sell the same :)
@@FarmerCop I think I would enjoy bales alot more, but as much as I tell myself not to I will alway go for the most valuable option. Thank you for helping and I wish you luck.
The main difference is how much you can load into/on the pick-up device. A trailer can hold n number of bails, and each bail is about 4,000 litters. A loading wagon does not hold bales, yet it can be compared to it. So a trailer that can hold 16 bales can hold 64,000 litters (16 bales x 4,000 litters per bale) vs. 35,000 litters or so for a loading wagon. Just remember that it takes two passes if you are using a trailer (one pass with the baler to bale it, then the second to pick it up), and only one for the loading wagon. With a mod like Follow Me or Course Play it may not matter to you.
Wheat,Barley,Oats have an extra step attached to them which is very time consuming. Collecting the Straw or making bales. It takes hours.
Soyabeans are rhe easiest in my opinion.
Sugar beets are pretty good when the price hits $450 per 1000. I have the modded silo that holds 1.5 Mil liters so I just fill that up and wait on the prices.
Thanks so much, this will help me so much!
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I would add that sugar cane takes a long time to grow, and to harvest. So, how many times could you grow and harvest something else (like oats) in that same amount of time? Maybe that's a reason you get so much money from it???
What dose the yield mean ?
That is the amount of a crop you get off of a specific field or area
you should also add time to grow and harvest. I am more interested which crop makes most money per time
I'd like to see a video like this for seasons.
Eventually I will do a seasons tutorial series and test video series
Sugarcane with (2) 32,400l mod grain trailer that can attach to Case sugar cane harvester, it will run until trailer is full and harvest 99 percent if headland is open. Only take is no notification of full trailer. I like to swap with empty while I go to offload and manage to keep seamless flow
That is a great way to do it and makes sense
I love these kinda videos
Thank you :)
How about cost per time unit? - if it takes twice as long to harvest potatoes than to bring in Oats for example, what then is the profitability? - imo profit is time based
it depends on a few factors but the ones i have found have been canola, soybeans and sunflowers.
I know I'm a little late but I still only have fs19 and I find that these are the crops that sell best, at least on ravenport
Slow and boring, but i agree, silage is the way to go.
Make a field big enough for 200 bales of grass (max limit on console), or more, i have 2 currently.
Grab a decent tractor, maybe 500hp. I downloaded the mod for the base game mower with ability to swath, but theres one in the dlc pack if you dont want to use it, same thing (almost). With the modded one, you can attach both mower parts to the front, and the fast baler to the rear.
At good prices (easy economy), 200 bales = 500k plus. Not a good price that day? Mow it anyway. Grass stays on the field in that swath. 2 days of mowing and youll harvest at about 5km an hour, but itll be worth 1m+. Not a good price the second day? Repeat as long as necessary.
Would 100% recommend both the mod mower and mod autoloading round bale trailer (holds 54), as well as more than one tractor mowing/baling at a time, but up to you.
90% automated process, all you have to do is transport the bales, can do whatever else you like while you wait.
Just for fun: The Helper will plant not less than 231 !! Trees on field 29, which sale for about 2900 each (on easy). At least you make 680.000 of it. Now we need silage and popplers value and were complete.
That is very true forestry is extremely profitable :)
Wish they would put names underneth the crop icons in the prices list, I bought this game for my girlfriend she played 15 mins of it and hasn't played it since. I started it got addicted but started again and then lost that buzz
u can trun plant withering off?? i dont have that on mine for some reason
You definitely can should be somewhere in the menu :)
@@FarmerCop I figured it out aperantly when u ha e seasons active it takes the plant withering away so I had to remove season
I cashed in all my sunflowers (158k liters) for 1,400ish an received over 352K took some to build up that much but was worth it than bought a sugar beet harvester and gathered 1.5mil litters in a single harvest (field 8 ravenport) and struggling to sell it for the price I’m aiming for, haven’t tried cotton yet and that may be my next big buy for a machine cause I want the expensive John Deere one lol
Thank you for this content! Have you considered running this test and providing metrics on the time it took for each crop?
Id like to know total profit vs expense. Like for example. How many liters of seed needed for each crop type to seed specific field. Dollar amount per hour. Cost of machines. That would be time consuming but i just feel like machines that only do potatos or only sugar beet or only sugarcane are the most expensive. Then storage, if you dont intend on just dumping it on the ground, also in most cases costs extra. What it all comes down to is probably everything makes the same amount of money, just depends on what time you sell it.
Are the grow times the same for each crop in your test,? And if so/ not, would you profit more from doing wheat twice if it grew faster than say sugar cane and what is the harvesting times for crops? Can you harvest two fields of wheat faster than one field of sugarcane? Ect ect....
Great question, all crops grow at the same speed except sugarcane that takes twice as long.
@@FarmerCop thanks I didn't know this.
The results are surprising. However I still believe if you have a bigger field then cotton will always be the winner. As it’s the best paying crop that takes the less time. Compared to Root crops and sugarcane which are slower processes
Time needed is a very big deal and great point you bring up. Cotton definitely is less labor intensive than some of the others
@@FarmerCop A 45 foot header at 6mph beats out a 20 foot (6m) header at 6mph or even 9mph (if you were using a helianthus) Corn maxes out at 12m (40ft), as does the helianthus (40ft again). Corn wants ploughing, though. On a BIG field, you may find it worth not bothering with ploughing if you're going with silage, and cropping at the last growing stage to save time.
I’m curious to know if the cost the same to plant your standard grains. Amount of seed used to plant the same? I assume it will be different which can Drastically change the profits.
Seed goes from 500l per hectare down to 200l per hectare, but seed costs 1000 per litre and what you get per hectare is higher for wheat than it is for soybeans, so to a large extent, it evens out. Even if it did, you get 5-8,000 litres per hectare, making the 2-500l difference meaningless in scale.
Seeds will change the price a bit but like Mark said it wont be drastic. There are so many factors to consider when deciding the best crop fpr your farm
@@FarmerCop except for root crops, where the amount of seed needed goes through the roof (especially for potatoes).
Personally, I try to figure out what would be grown in the region the map portrays irl and stick to those crops. And then I tend to play with seasons and you end up with sometimes complex crop rotations.
@@jwenting Beets use seed, so wrong there. Potatoes can use potatoes, so wrong there, except in the start-off, and you can keep contract output for that, and the payout for potatoes assume you will be paying for seed, not using potatoes. Oh, and sugarcane you convert to seed in the planter, and it is cheaper than the sale price in normal, so you can make some bank just buying sugarcane pallets at 140 per thousand and selling for anywhere up to 250 per thousand.
Sugarcane looks like the worst. 100k litres from that tiny field means shipping that stuff around in bulk. It's already bad enough dealing with taters and beets but sugarcane is crazy.
Cotton was my biggest surprise from all this although it's a bit of an odd one since you can only sell in chunks that match the bales so smaller fields can go entire harvests without any saleable crop.
Can you do a test to see what the most profitable log length per price is to sell to lumber mills?
I did a bit of testing a while back and had findings suggesting that 7m and 8m were the highest selling prices, but I could be wrong.
If your want to test it and see what you get, a great way to test this would be to have a saved game with a single tree that's fully grown.
Then you could use a tree harvester and cut the tree into all the various lengths available (I recommend using the Ponsse Buffalo Dual since it can cut trees into log lengths of 1m - 15m) and then transport each piece of the same tree to the log sell points. Start with a whole tree (branches not trimmed), then a bare tree,) then go down the line starting with 1m.
Once you record a sell price, reload and test the next length. Bonus: See if each log size differs in yield if you send them through woodchippers.
I've often wondered if it is more profitable to sell trees in long log lengths or to simply chip them instead of selling as logs.
Thank you for that idea that is a great question and I will likely post a video on this soon
This is the primary yield (value) of the crop.
There is also a secondary yield by chopping it all up for silage.
Very true, silage would have added in a lot of additional factors to consider as I would have had to test most crops again as most can be whole cropped so I did not want to run that in this video
I grow soy bc the sell price is highest. But he has it ranked low. Should I change what I grow?
Not nescessarily, i used averages, every map has different prices for different crops and the ones in this test that esrned more do require more work
@@FarmerCop ok thx. So should I keep growing soy beans
thought i was watching a gamer project farm video for a hot minute.
I agree silage is great if your using grass try the mower vehile
Awesome
Thx 4 the advice
Your welcome :)
I'd love a comparison which includes weeds, lime, and fertilizer. Yes, a *big* table :D
"Do it yourself!". Well, yeah, that's a fair suggestion. Too lazy ;-)
it takes about 3 days for sugarcane to be fully grown, and ready for harvest. What about time it takes to grow? How is this an accurate representation of most profitable crop?
That is very true, the goal of this test was just to see what the yield and money earned would be in a specific area.
also machinery cost, the sugarcane harvester is about the same price as a potato harvester or a high end combine with a tiny working width
@@cmotdibbler4454 there is a cheap pull behind sugarcane harvester in base game as well whjch is cheaper than a normal harvester
@@FarmerCop doens't it have a 1m working width and need an additional 100hp tractor?
I'm not crapping on your results they are really useful if you have all the equipment already.
A good follow up video might be which crop makes more money for the time and initial outlay.
A crop might not be as enticing if it takes four times as long and costs twice as much to harvest and takes twice as long to grow
@@cmotdibbler4454 very true and i definitely agree with you, all of the higher yield crops such as cotton, sugarbeets, potatoes, sugarcane defjnitely require a lot more effort and in general more expensive equilment
Interesting. I play on lone oak map with seasons and with the fields I have now I make the most with soybeans, canola is second, then corn, and then wheat, barley and oats. Haven't tried the other crops yet 🤔
Cotton. One big field of cotton and your good for a bit.
I think you might have under-valued canola, I think a better average would have been 1500 or higher. thats what I usually see it around. Great info though!
That may be true, just estimates i used haha. You are welcome :)
I just subbed. You have a unique channel. Thanks for the information and I back the blue.
Thank you, welcome to the channel and thank you for the support it means a lot to us and we need it
Same bro
Volume brings time you spend working, i would like to know how much time you spend on all the crops. If you toulk 5 times as much time for sugarrbeets comparing to another crop you could earn money faster with replanting a smaller yeild crop. In a real world you can apply this theory, in game world where you can manipulate crop growt time you have to account for real time spent also.
That is very true, the goal of this test was just to see what the yield and money earned would be in a specific area
True. In FS19 time-invested highly correlates with profit.
Very true, harvesting time potato, sugarcane or beet take all the long and travels for storage. I rather spend the time raid my horses or cutting some trees 😏
Profit per hour is a video game term. Unless you are in Texas or someplace where you can double crop certain crops you can only grow one crop per field per year. Also planting your entire farm to soybeans and doing that "year" after "year" is not realistic. Crops need to be rotated.
Very true. Definitely a video game term and definitely crops have to be rotated
when you are starting just from the Beginning and who are new to games and will have that headers for only couple of crop Canola is a best option and after getting the baling tech wheat and barley is a best option.
Great vid bro :)
Thank you :)
Thanks for the video! I was just wondering this the other day. But now I'm curious, what about efficiency? For example the ones that paid high (cotton, potatoes, sugar beets) they take much longer to plant, and harvest than the others. So.. when you factor a full cycle in, what is the best profit per hour crop?
Youre welcome! And that is a very valid point there is a lot of variation in time needed, equipment costs, seeds, ect.
For sure! So im curious as to what is the best "Profit per hour" persay
@@beegekhaos3171 best profit is soy followed by cotton and silage
@@LuziBeerbaum Oh, interesting. Corm for the silage i assume?
@@beegekhaos3171 It depends. corn produces more biomass which is better for vanilla. With seasons it's best to mix it so you can harvest twice per year and don't have to deal with crop rotation. I actually change wheat for corn every other season cause i need the straw for my cattle. If you need hay for TMR produce silage, sell some of it, buy hay at the shop and earn a litte money.
I like to have fun with sugacane 😁 it takes time to grow and I do logs and animals in meantime 😂👍
This was really interesting. I think I’m going to have to try sugarcane now. Thanks
Your welcome! It is more labor intensive but it does have a decent pay out
You’ll only do it once, it’s so time consuming playing solo even with helpers
hybrid9mm I actually just got my first harvest done and really enjoyed it. I can definitely see how it would get boring though, especially if you’re doing a lot of it
I’m on console so I’m missing the GPS and AI helper scripts etc, so yeah for me once was enough, although in multiplayer it would work better
I like what you are doing sir. Nice work
Thank you :)
grass turned into silage grass is free after planted and is all over the map for free just time to harvest and bail plus fuel cost
I liked the video tho wish you had added planting cost in to it
If you look online there's a few price charts that have the maximum prices on them, pretty sure it's a hard limit so it won't go past them.
Recalculatin em
1. Sugarcane: 50,516
2. Potato: 28,416
3. Sugarbeet: 28,206
4. Cotton: 24,912
5. Oat: 12,842 + 6,024 = 18,866
6. Wheat: 12,011 + 6,035 = 18,046
7. Barley: 12,003 + 6,018 = 18,021
8. Soy: 14,016
9. Sunflower: 14,011
10. Corn: 13,999
11. Canola: 13,997
Wonder if mods like maizeplus and whatever the one that adds extra strawtypes balance it a little more
I would say stick to 2 or 3 crops per feild you got and just rotate the crops and sell at a good price
Cotton is not at the top? I got 100 grand plus from cotton in a small field
It may be depending again on prices
@@FarmerCop it also depends on how fast it grows ect. But this helped a lot
Sugarbeets it is! Sugarcane looks like it takes way too long to plant and harvest, correct me if I'm wrong.
Sugarcane does make more BUT does take a lot of work haha
Isnt sugarcane growing slower than other crops ?
Yes, takes about two game days while most everything else (except trees) takes about a game day.
@Farmer cop Could you make another video like this one for the new FS-22? Please...
Yes i will at some point :)
@@FarmerCop Thank you in advance
First comment - yay! :D
By the way, does any of you play "Age of Empires II"? There is a UA-camr "Spirit of the Law" that analyzes all the stuff and numbers there. Farmer Cop is the same for FS19!
Another interesting and useful test video. Can't wait to see more - as always! :)
Thank you :) haha i used to play AOE 2 all the time
Thanks for the video it helps me know which crops are best to grow
Your welcome! Glad you enjoyed :)