Planning rotations beyond one year can quickly become a complex process. The complexity increases rapidly with large numbers of fields and many crop options. There is a piece of software called the Land Use Planner which may make such planning easier.
The Land Use Planner is used in five basic steps:
Steps 1 - 4 are relatively easy. Step 5 is the one where you will want to spend most of your time. It is important to adjust the budget numbers to reflect your costs and your estimates of future prices and yields.
The basic budgets were originally taken from the SAF Crop Planning Guide hence there are budgets based on soil zone and tillage practice. New budgets can be created to reflect unique circumstances.
The program treats forage, either for grazing or for hay, as a crop and endeavours to compare the returns from forage on the same basis as returns from cereal or oilseeds. While it can be used to compare different cropping scenarios, it is especially designed to project the returns when land is converted to forage for hay or grazing. The program allows the grazing benefit from uncultivated, grazable acres to be added to the grazing capacity of cultivated acres so that a true comparison can be made between the economics of cropping vs. grazing for a particular parcel(s).
Livestock enterprises can be added to the overall farm projections but their economics are kept separate from the returns to the land resulting from crops or forage.
The program is a budgeting tool and gives a simple yearly net income projection for each parcel and each year as well as a cumulative total farm net income. It does not project any Balance Sheets or Cash Flow Statements. The idea behind its use is that it allows you to easily project your rotation up to eight years. If the results of a particular scenario or change are promising, then you will want to use other programs to project a detailed cash flow to make sure the plan is possible.
The Land Use Planner is available free of charge at any SAF Rural Service Centre.