Labor Flow Analysis

Don Schuster and Rick Klemme [1]

The Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trial has examined profitability, nitrogen availability, weed seed bank changes, biodiversity and many other areas of interest for the past ten years. The economic findings have shown potential for each system to make a profit. Further findings have indicated that the diversified systems tend to be more environmental friendly.

However, there is a practical aspect to the comparison of these systems that has been neglected thus far. This paper examines the effectiveness of labor, that is, how it is distributed across the year for the systems. It is very important that a system be workable so that field operations can be completed on time. It does not matter how profitable or environmental friendly a system is if it has unreasonable labor requirements.

Procedure

For this analysis, the number of actual machinery passes for Arlington and Lakeland were used to determine whether all the operations in a system could be completed in a timely manner. (See table 4b.1) Average passes over the field were used for rotary hoeing and row cultivation for cropping system 3. At Arlington, the average rotary hoeing occurred 2.4 times per year for soybeans and 2.25 times for corn. At Lakeland, the average rotary hoeing occurred 2.1 times per year for soybeans and 1.75 times for corn. At Arlington, the average in row cultivation occurred 3.6 times per year for soybeans and 2.5 times for corn. At Lakeland, the average in row cultivation occurred 1.9 times per year for soybeans and 1.25 times for corn.

The amount of days available for each field operation was held constant across all systems. For example, each system had 48 days to get the corn planted. This is not saying that corn planted in the middle of June will perform as well as corn planted on May 1st, it’s just saying that corn could be planted during that time frame. (See table 4b.2) All operations had the same number of available days and they covered the same time periods, except for soybean harvest. Because winter wheat is planted after soybean harvest in cropping system 3, the beans must be harvested earlier than in cropping system 2.

This number of days represents the maximum days available for each machinery operation. In a normal farming operation, weather, machinery breakdowns, personal agendas, etc. contribute to decreasing the total number of available days.

Results

The no-till cropping system two needed the least number of hours to perform all the farm operations--564 hours for a 1200-acre farm. This was followed by the continuous corn system (CS1) with 701 hours, or an increase of 24%. Cropping system 3 (Lakeland) took 926 hours annually to complete and at Arlington, the total was 1101 hours.

Examining cropping systems 1 and 2 (see graphs 4b.1 and 4b.2) shows two major workload periods: one during the springtime field preparation and planting periods and the other at fall harvest. In cropping system 1 and 2’s, fall workloads are the busiest time of the year with about 10 hours a day for cropping system 1 and almost 9 hours a day for cropping system 2. Cropping systems 1 and 2’s spring time planting season peaks at about 6 hours a day for cropping system 1 and about 8 hours a day for cropping system 2.

Looking at cropping system 3 shows two major peaks (see graphs 4b.3 and 4b.4 for Arlington and Lakeland, respectively). Unlike cropping systems 1 and 2, the peaks for cropping system 3 come in the summer and fall.

Rotary hoeing and row cultivation cause peaks in the summer of 15 hours a day for Arlington and about 12 hours a day for Lakeland. The combined fall harvesting of soybeans and corn, planting wheat and fall field preparation result in cropping system 3 operators having some very long, 18-hour days.

Conclusion

With the machinery set used for cropping systems 1 and 2 and the number of days allowed to perform each operation, these two cropping systems would cause an operator only minor, short-term labor bottlenecks. Even when weather problems arose, that would cause the delays, an operator would have enough flexibility to perform these tasks in a timely matter.

Cropping system 3 on the other hand has some major labor constraints in the summer and fall.

• The number of row cultivations at Arlington (3.6x soybean; 2.5x corn) causes a bottleneck that needs to be examined. As can be seen in the figure, this requires a long series of 16 hours a day--and that’s assuming perfect weather and no breakdowns. We assume this could not be done on a normal 1200-acre farm without hiring at least 3 more tractors and cultivators
• The cultivation situation at Lakeland is also on area of concern (1.9x soybean; 1.25x corn). This would require a long series of 10 hours a day in the summer. As long as there are no weather or breakdown problems this could be managed without additional equipment, but this is very unlikely.

At both sites then, resources for mechanical cultivation may need to be made available. On the other hand, 1200 acres may simply be too large for this diversified cropping system, particularly if it’s organic.

In the fall cropping systems 3 faces another important bottleneck. Even with perfect weather and no breakdowns, an operator cannot work for 18 hours a day for about a two-week period. The only solution for this is to have the crops custom harvested, hire labor to handle overlapping operations, or purchase a larger equipment set. It is interesting to note that when this system was designed in the early 1990’s the machinery set was downsized to save capital costs. As we see now, this decision has lead to significant labor constraints.

Table 1: Total Numbers of Hours for Each Operation

Grain hauling was omitted because it could possibly be very low, or equal to the number of hours of harvesting. This would depend on how the operator handled this portion of the operation.

Table 2: Operation Time Schedule

Harvesting soybeans on CS 3 needs to be completed by October 10th so that winter wheat can be planted in a timely fashion.

[1] Don Schuster, Outreach Specialist at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, UW-Madison, email: schuster@aae.wisc.edu. Rick Klemme, Assoc. Dean, Collage of Ag. and Life Science, UW-Madison, email: rklemme@cals.wisc.edu

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