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Vol. 17, No. 4
Article 3 of 7
March 30, 2007
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Days Suitable for Fieldwork in Missouri By Ray Massey The number of days available to complete land based activities influences input (e.g., variety/hybrid planted, pesticide used) and machinery decisions. Limited fieldwork days during critical times, such as tillage, planting and harvest, require careful management. A large machinery complement will complete field work quickly but can increase ownership costs. A small machinery complement may have fewer ownership costs but cause delays of some key activities that affect productivity. The size of machinery that can efficiently complete the necessary activities depends on how many days it can actually be used in the field. The Missouri Agricultural Statistics Service (MASS) reports the number of days each week suitable for field work starting around the first week of April. Historically, this has been early enough to cover the usual corn planting dates of mid-April to mid-May. However, corn planting has been occurring much earlier in recent years. The USDA reported 46 percent and 50 percent of corn was planted by mid-April in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Unfortunately, no suitable fieldwork days data prior to April exist for Missouri. MASS provides estimates of fieldwork days in each of the nine reporting districts. A summary of the average number of weekly fieldwork days from 1977 to 2006 for three key seasons is shown in table 1. Estimates are for seven day work weeks. If fieldwork will not normally be done on Sundays or holidays, subtract 0.7 days per week. The complete data by individual week can be accessed at http://agebb.missouri.edu/mgt/fieldwork.htm. If your particular interest lies in determining the probability of completing a particular field activity within an acceptable time period, FAPRI has developed an excellent spreadsheet tool. It allows the user to enter information about 1) preferred start and ending date, 2) acres worked and 3) equipment descriptions. Using the historical frequencies of days suitable for fieldwork, it returns an estimate of the percent of time that you will be able to complete the work within the required time frame. This spreadsheet can be downloaded at http://www.fapri.missouri.edu/.
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