- Winter rapeseed is grown in Poland on nearly one million hectares.
- Although it is an expensive and difficult plant to cultivate due to the high doses of fertilization and the need to perform many plant protection treatments, for years it has provided relatively high income per hectare.
- Currently, we are seeing a downward trend in this regard, but rapeseed is nevertheless a valuable and popular element of crop rotations.
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Sorghum for silage. We look at the plantation in mid-August
Different rapeseed sowing technologies
Service providers offer various rapeseed sowing technologies. We can distinguish three basic ones – traditional sowing with a cultivator-seeder, strip-till and precision sowing. Price differences, which are discussed below, result from the specifics of individual technologies and the scope of work performed by a given machine.
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Dry sowing. How much water does rapeseed need in autumn?
In the case of traditional sowing with a cultivator – active or passive – in one visit the soil is prepared and the seeds are sown, and for such a service you have to pay on average PLN 250/ha. We are talking about a similar amount – on average PLN 250/ha – in the case of point sowing, where the seeds are placed with great precision and there is the possibility of applying fertilizer right next to the seed. Strip-till is a much more expensive solution, but in one pass it completes deep cultivation, deep fertilization and precise seed sowing, and for such a service you have to pay on average PLN 510/ha.
Regional differences and price increases
Similarly to the case of purchase prices of agricultural products, we also observe regional differences in the matter of services. This results, among other things, from the size of farms, their economic condition, i.e. the amounts that the customer is willing to pay for the service or the size of the competition in a given area, i.e. the need to fight for the customer or the lack thereof. In the case of traditional and precision sowing, we collected too few offers to draw conclusions, while in the case of strip-till technology, with its average price of PLN 510/ha, it is worth noting that in the Podlaskie province you have to pay an average of PLN 480/ha, and in the Lublin province an average of PLN 560/ha. Of course, the province is again a generalization, the counties were more reliable, nevertheless it is clearly visible that in the examples given the difference is significant.
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How much does it cost to grow rapeseed? Data from WIR
It cannot be hidden that it is relatively expensive compared to previous years. A few years ago, "without grace" it was possible to use sowing with a cultivator-seed drill for less than PLN 200/ha, and when strip-till technology was becoming popular, many farmers did not want to use it, arguing that PLN 500/ha was definitely too expensive. Currently, it is rather difficult to expect it to be significantly cheaper. The costs of running a service business are increasing in many aspects, and the room for improvement in terms of possible price drops is the surplus, which is the profit of the service provider, which decreases primarily in the case of high competition on the local market and the need to attract the customer with an attractive price.
