Africa Estate Farm Tools

Own tractor and implement, or a contractor?

What your own tractor and implement cost an hour and a hectare, against a contractor's rate. Choose the implement from the Department of Agriculture's Guide to Machinery Costs 2025-2026 and the tractor's power: the guide gives the average price, life, insurance and repairs, and you replace them with your own. The answer shows the hectares a year from which owning pays, and what diesel, use and repairs do to it.

1. The job

Every pass counts: twice over 200 ha is 400 ha.
Width (m) x speed (km/h) x field efficiency (e.g. 0.75) / 10. Your own experience wins.
The guide's three power demands set the diesel. Assumed heavy (the most diesel) until you choose.

Guide: R 14 000 without VAT, 3 000 hours of life, repairs 100% of the price over its life, insurance 0.50% of the average value a year.

2. The tractor

Horsepower x 0.746 = kW.
Your dealer's quote wins. Repairs are reckoned on this price.
Empty: the price new (a new tractor). For yours, what it would sell for today.
Empty: 10% of the price new (the guide).
Its ownership costs are shared by all its hours. The guide assumes 750 hours a year in all.
Your own insurance, repairs and diesel use

Guide: insurance and licence 0.75% of the average value a year; repairs 120% of the price new over 10 000 hours. Your own records win; litres an hour wins over litres a hectare.

3. The implement

Guide: R 14 000 without VAT. Your quote wins.
Your own insurance and repairs

4. Diesel, operator, interest and the contractor

Empty: R 31.95, the Gauteng wholesale list price from 2026-10-07. It changes monthly; enter what you pay, after any diesel refund you claim.
Empty: the national minimum wage for farm workers (2026-03-01).
Empty: prime, 10.75% from 2026-09-25, a reference. Your lender's rate, or what your own money would earn elsewhere.
On the same VAT basis as your other figures (the guide's prices are without VAT).

The answer

Enter the hectares a year, the work rate, the tractor's power and the implement to see the cost.

Crop budget per hectareAsk Africa EstateRead: What a Farm Costs to Run, and to Get the Crop to Market

What this does not tell you

  • This compares money only. Whether a contractor comes on the day you need him, and what a late plant or spray costs you, is yours to weigh.
  • The guide's prices are national averages without VAT, not a dealer's quote; repairs are its average over the machine's life, not your machine's record. Your own figures win.
  • The diesel price is the Gauteng wholesale list price of the month shown; you pay more or less at your depot, and a diesel refund lowers it. Enter your own.
  • Interest is prime as a reference until you enter your own rate. Income tax (wear and tear allowances, deductions) is not worked out here.
  • Nothing you enter is uploaded or kept by us; the share link carries farm figures only.

Sources

Estimate, not advice. Confirm every figure with your bank, attorney and tax practitioner before a decision.