Tips on being profitable?

[kevinorf]

I’ve dabbled in FS17 and am playing FS19, both the small farm mode and management mode where you start with $1.25 million. I enjoy both modes. Just want some tips on making a steady profit. I don’t mind a slow burn. Soybeans and suflowers seem to fetch good prices. I’ve been doing okay in management mode but I probably get too much equipment too soon (I lease mainly) or overextend myself with horses or whatever.

Any suggestions for being more profitable on the small farm or equipment for starting the management mode? For management mode, field 6 seems good (US map). Most of the other locations don’t have room to place stuff (other than the default starting farm which has pretty small fields).

I’ll probably hold off on animals for a while. Also, I wanted to try the European map...

[Sigmund]

Since you are playing on "Farm-Manager" difficulty which corresponds to normal (out of Easy/Normal/Hard) you should know that you will have Normal crop prices. So you will have to work perhaps 2x more than if you played on Easy.

With that said here's a guide which i recommend you take a look:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1573695066

It shows a comparison of AVERAGE crop prices for all difficulties, as well as yields.

Of course you can get slightly better profits if you sell when prices are at their max. (for example, around 3200 for Soybeans on easy)

If you didn't check the guide, then i can tell you that the most profitable activity by far is Corn-Silage. (Sugarcane MIGHT be more profitable on easy but it involves a LOT of work)

If you do Wheat/Barley AND you pickup the straw (For ex with a loading trailer (yeah they are expensive)) it can be almost as twice as profitable as the expensive crops (Soybeans/Sunflowers/Canola), it's more work though since it's more quantity of grain to move, and straw to gather/transport/sell.

[kevinorf]

Thanks. Where do you store/ sell the straw?

Also is corn silage a ton of work? Not that I don’t mind...

I’m playing on Easy by the way.w

[Sigmund]

You sell the Straw at the Barn, usually found at the Animal Dealer location.

You can store Straw by dumping it into the ground, but if the plan is to sell it, then might as well sell it immediately.

[SeaDog]

Originally posted by Sigmund:

You sell the Straw at the Barn, usually found at the Animal Dealer location.

Unless you are on the american map, then it is as far away from everything as possible.

[Sigmund]

Corn-Silage is substantially more work than say just farming Soybeans (which is the easiest cause it's less quantity of grain to move).

If you do corn, you use a planter, not a seeder. Planting machines don't auto-cultivate.
This means you have to do 1 pass of cultivating everytime.

On the other hand if you're doing grains (wheat/barley/oat/canola/soybeans) you can use the 3-in-1 seeder machines, (like the Amazone Condor 15001 for example), which cultivate/seed/fertilize, all in 1 pass.

Also, the largest planter(corn,etc) is 12 meters wide, the largest seeder (wheat,etc) is 25.6 meters wide.

So, to recap.
doing corn-silage
You will have to cultivate separately. (more work)
You will use a planter 12 meters max. (more work/time)
You will drive alongside the Forage harvester (assuming you have a worker doing it), while he fills your trailer up with chaff.
You will have to transport high quantity of chaff, ideally for this you should have fields close to the Biogas plant. (You will be driving back and fourth hauling chaff)
The Chaff needs to be placed on a bunker and then compacted (driving a tractor with wheel weights on top of it) and then blanketed, after a while the chaff becomes silage.
If you plan on using the Biogas plant bunkers you need to own the Biogas plant land. (costs 141,000 in Feldbrunn)
It is useful to use Conveyor belts to transfer the Silage in the bunkers directly into the biogas plant sellpoint. Conveyor belts are very cheap and worth it. (it's the only way to handle massive quantities really. Unless you think it's cool to bucket millions of liters of silage :)
Biogas plant only pays you at midnight, so you wont get the profit immediately.

So, all of this work, compared to Soybeans, just getting the stuff on your trailer and selling.
Substantially more work, but quite profitable!

(note: Chaff = broken up corn, that your forage harvester produces as he processes the corn)

[Aesyle]

Hmm....

On Ravenport map, best fields to get would be 15 and 16 (about 120K per field) since they can be joined to create bigger field and almost all buyable land is field. From there on, get 17 and 14, so you can join them all to create big field.

For overall tips/hints:
Don't use helper at all since wage payment cuts deep into your profit. But if you need to use helper, disable all helper automatic buy options. Because helpers buy the stuff at higher price than you can buy it from store.

For crop:
While Soybeans have high sell price, the yield from them is also lowest of all crops in game. So, you need medium to big sized field for them. Also, avoid sunflowers since for them, you need special planter and special harvester header as well.

Barley has the highest yield of grain crops and you'll also get straw from it. If you add the money gained from straw to the sale price, Wheat and Barley income increases quite a bit. Downside is that you need to have loading wagon to collect the straw and sell it at Barn.

For equipment:
Best tractor to start out would be Case IH 7200 Pro since it's cheapest Medium tractor (98.000). While it has 170 hp at start, with 45.500, you can upgrade it to 261 hp, making it one of the most powerful medium tractors. Also, it has plenty of wheel configurations and decent speed (40 km/h). Only downside is that it can't take front loader.

For seeder, best early- to mid-game would be Horsch Pronto 9 DC since it has cultivator and fertz spreader built-in. It holds 3.000L of seed and 2.000L of solid fertz. Saving you money not to get separate cultivator and also fertilizes the sown crop (+25% yield bonus). Also, it's 9m wide with operating speed of 20 km/h. While Pronto needs 290 hp tractor, fully upgraded Case IH 7200 (7250) with 261 hp will operate it fine. Also, twin wide wheels provide better grip (less wheel spin on bumps).

To extend the seed capacity of seeder, i'm also using Väderstad FH 2200 (found under planters) since it can hold 2.200L of either seed or solid fertz. It also acts as front weight. Note: using it with Pronto, solid fertz runs out sooner than seed.

For harvester:
Try to get Adstselmash RSM 161 and it's 9m header (Draper Stream 900) since it's wide enough for enjoyable harvest and it also holds 10.500L of crop. Or for absolute grind, go with FMZ Bizon harvester (the cheapest one).

For transport:
Argoliner HKD 302 (21.000L) is good size and you can also connect as many HKDs to each other as you desire to extend capacity per trip. Also, all 3x cars can pull that trailer. Cheapest would be using Mahindra Retriever 1000 (13K) if you have that DLC. Oh, it may not go uphill with fully loaded trailer.

For fertilizer:
If you want to get full +50% yiled bonus from fertz and also lime spreading is enabled, then:
Väderstad FH 2200 + Case IH 7250 with twin narrow wheels + Bredal K105 fully upgraded (all capacity extensions + narrow wheels + 6m spreading unit).
I have that combo currenty in use and it can hold 16.200L of solid fertz with 18m spread. Or if you dump the solid fertz from K105 to spread lime, it holds 14.000L. Though, spread drops to 12m for some reason.
Case IH doesn't need to have twin narrow wheels and it does fine with stock 170 hp engine but narrow tires are must if you don't want to destroy your crops (if enabled).
Also, solid fertilizer has the lowest consumption rate of all fertilizers and it's best for saving money, until you have enough animals for manure/slurry. Oh, i'm using my fertz spreader as mobile fertz storage as well. Since my seeder runs out of fertz sooner than seeds (due to the seed expansion).

[Nåvigåtør]

Thanks for the table and your effort.

[Oceansize]

After reading the OP I came here to talk about corn silage but I see Sigmund has covered it far more exhaustively than me. I haven't tried it in FS 19, but in FS15 and FS17 it was loads of money. Granted, you have to put in the work.

The best thing about corn silage is the money, the worst part is (was?) bucket loading the silage from the biogas bunker silo to the hopper, extremely tedious. But according to Sigmund we can now use conveyor belts for that which I'd never thought of which makes me much more excited to try this again.

[Sigmund]

@Oceansize
the Conveyor belts have been around for a while now, i think FS15? but i'm not sure
They were in FS17 for sure.

One of the pieces of the Conveyor belts, the Lizard S-710, is basicly like a vacuum cleaner, it will suck up all material in a radius (not extreme large, but big), so as time passes the belt is transporting material. The only thing you need to do, as you are emptying the bunker full of silage, is to keep repositioning the Belt (lizard S-710) as well as the belt links (Grimme TC80-16) from time to time, and the entire bunker is emptied with very little effort.

Repositioning the belts is easy believe me, and you only need to do it a few times.

Personally i checked a youtube video tutorial for the belts and then tried them, and it was easy. In no time you will be using them like a pro. :)

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by Sigmund:

@Oceansize
the Conveyor belts have been around for a while now, i think FS15? but i'm not sure
They were in FS17 for sure.

One of the pieces of the Conveyor belts, the Lizard S-710, is basicly like a vacuum cleaner, it will suck up all material in a radius (not extreme large, but big), so as time passes the belt is transporting material. The only thing you need to do, as you are emptying the bunker full of silage, is to keep repositioning the Belt (lizard S-710) as well as the belt links (Grimme TC80-16) from time to time, and the entire bunker is emptied with very little effort.

Repositioning the belts is easy believe me, and you only need to do it a few times.

Personally i checked a youtube video tutorial for the belts and then tried them, and it was easy. In no time you will be using them like a pro. :)

Yes I didn't mean to imply the conveyor belts are new, only that the idea of using them to drop stuff into a hopper is new (to me). :-)

Thank you for explaining to me how the S-710 works, that was the big mystery of the conveyor belts to me, and why I've never used them: I assumed I would have to use a telehandler to get stuff off the ground onto them, and I hate having to scoop/scrape anything off the ground. But if I can use a vacuum to suck it all onto the belts, that's fantastic. I will definitely give it a try.

[ostoss]

For Lime buy it in Lime station more cheapest

[kevinorf]

Thanks for all the great tips!

I’ll probably try barley or wheat and straw first, then silage (I enjoy trying to put all the moving parts together). Can you recommend a good earlier game loading trailer for straw?

[Sigmund]

I don't have the game open right now, but get the biggest loading trailer you can afford, as well as one that you can actually power (they have power requirements).

loading trailers are expensive but the bigger one you get the less trips you make :)

Also, they fill up with straw quite fast. The yield of straw is quite high.

If you're low on cash, take the basic one, i guess.

[ancienthighway]

Pay off any loans you start with.
Lease rather than buy.
Take harvest missions you can complete using your own equipment or have a low lease rate compared to mission payout.
Do the work yourself rather than hiring workers.

The light tractor Fendt Favorit 515 (with the upgraded engine, front loader, and narrow tires) is a work horse in the early game. You will need a front loader to move your pallets around. The narrow tires will eliminate or greatly reduce crop damage when it's time to fertilize or weed your fields.
Use the Strautmann SEK 82 trailer with the bale wagon configuration to carry up to 6 pallets single stacked, a frontloader (I use the Stoll FZ 60) with pallet forks, and a weight 1000-1500 kg? lbs?.
For the medium tractor, use either the New Holland T6 or Case Maxxum. Both can be configured with front loader. Max out the engine and wide weighted tires.

For harvester:
Try to get Adstselmash RSM 161 and it's 9m header (Draper Stream 900) since it's wide enough for enjoyable harvest and it also holds 10.500L of crop.

The name is actually Rostselmash. A worthy harvester for small and medium sized fields. Use the Capello Diamant HS12 header for corn and sunflowers when needed.

For transport:
Argoliner HKD 302 (21.000L) is good size and you can also connect as many HKDs to each other as you desire to extend capacity per trip.

Lead off the tipper road train with a TKD 302. It's easier to handle backing up. I've found 1 TKD and one HKD sufficient for early game needs (4 full loads from the Rostselmash to fill both).

[kevinorf]

Great tips. Thanks again!