Overview
Understanding sustainability & production in Farming Simulator 2019 including the basics to help you start your farming empire!
The Basics:
Career Mode: This is the main part of the game. You’re the one in charge of your farm and you can develop it at your own pace.
There are three main activities:
⭐ Agriculture: Work fields, harvest crops, and sell them.
⭐ Animal Husbandry: Take care of your animals and sell their products.
⭐ Forestry: Cut trees and sell them.
Silos:
In the new farmer mode, there is a silo at your farm where you can store harvested crops temporarily. You can also buy another silo in the shop. To store your harvest in a silo, unload a full tipper into the pit next to the silo. When the trailer is in the correct position, you can unload the tipper.
To retrieve a commodity from storage, park a trailer below the pipe on the other side and activate it. This action opens a menu where you can select the type of grain you want. The trailer will continue to load until it’s full or there’s nothing left in the storage.
Root crops, like potatoes or sugar beet can’t be stored in silos. If you need a temporary place to keep your root crops, just pile them on the ground. Use a tractor with a front loader and shovel to load them back into the trailer again.
Purchasing Land:
You can only work on land you own: you can’t cut down trees or create new fields on someone else’s land. To buy new land, go to the map overview menu and switch to the “Land” screen. The fields you own are marked with green numbers on the map.
Hiring Workers:
You can hire a worker to do field work for you. This person will help you with a specific task, such as harvesting. You can start and stop a worker as often as you like by pressing “H”. Note that this is paid work, each time you get a worker to perform a task money will be deducted from your bank account.
Making Money:
Selling Crops: Not all the stations accept the same types of product or pay the same prices. The prices constantly change: they depend on the quantity sold of each grain type and the frequency of sale. For example, if you keep selling canola, the price will start to decrease over time. On the other hand, grain types that you haven’t sold for a while will start to fetch a higher price. Check the figures in the Price menu to see the prices applicable at each point of sale.
Selling Animal Products: If you buy animals, you gain another source of income: cows produce milk, sheep provide wool, and chickens lay eggs. These products will appear near the pen: Wool and eggs are stored in pallets and milk must be transported in a milk tank. If you take good care of them, animals will reproduce except horses. Note that pigs reproduce faster than cows and sheep. Pigs are much better for selling to the animal dealer.
Selling Wood: Mature trees can be logged and cut into pieces using a chainsaw or a tree harvester. The price of wood depends on the length and straightness of pieces. You can also chop up logs into wood chips and sell them. Another way to make wood chips is to plant poplars and harvest them using the appropriate forage harvester.
Great Demand: The unloading stations are in direct competition. Consequently, a station may find that it has an urgent need for a certain commodity. When this happens, the commodity will be in Great Demand temporarily. During a “Great Demand”, the applicable unloading station guarantees a significantly higher price than usual for a limited time. During this time the station will accept any amount of the commodity without the price dropping. You will receive a message as soon as something is in great demand, and you can monitor demand in the “Statistics” menu.
Missions: The fields on the map are owned by other computer-controlled farmers. They take care of their fields but are always in need of assistance. If you would like to work for them, go to the “Contracts” menu. They can lend you any tools you need, but you can also use your own. If you don’t want to finish a contract you’ve started, you can cancel it. You will not be penalised for cancelling a contract.
Loans: Don’t forget that you can take out a loan in the “Finances” menu.
Arable Farming:
To produce: Wheat, Canola, Barley, Oats, Corn, Soy, Beans & Sunflowers
Use a cultivator to loosen the soil. After cultivating a field, you can plant seeds. To sow your field, use a sowing machine, either a planter or a seeder. When the seed tank is empty, refill it with a seed pallet, which can be bought in the shop. Once the grain has ripened, use a combine harvester with a header attached to harvest the field. Once a combine’s tank is full, you can unload what you’ve harvested into a trailer. Then you can drive it to a selling point to sell the crop.
Special Crops – Potatoes, Cotton & Sugarcane:
⭐ Potatoes – Growing potatoes and sugar beet crops requires special sowing machines and harvesters. To harvest these crops, you first have to remove the foliage with a Haulm cutter and then dig them up with a potato or sugar beet harvester. The easiest and fastest way to do this is to use a self-propelled harvester. However, a machine like this is quite expensive and likely to exceed your budget early on. A cheaper alternative is to use a tractor with several specialised tools.
⭐ Sugarcane – The cultivation of sugarcane’s requires specialised planters and harvesters. Sugarcane billet planters are filled with pallets of sugarcane bought from the store or sugarcane from a previous harvest. Since the sugarcane harvesters don’t have tanks, you’ll need to attach a trailer to it if possible or hire a worker to drive alongside the harvester with a trailer.
⭐ Cotton – Growing cotton requires special harvesters and trailers. When you harvest cotton, the harvester makes cotton bales that can only be transported on a special cotton trailer.
Fertiliser:
After sowing a field, you can improve the harvest by adding fertiliser. Put fertiliser on the field twice before the plants are fully grown (+25% yield each time). Don’t forget that fertiliser is only effective once per growth stage.
Liquid fertiliser is spread on the field with a sprayer. Solid fertiliser is spread with a fertiliser spreader. Manufactured fertiliser, either solid or liquid, can be bought in pallets at the shop.
Slurry is spread with a slurry tank. Manure is spread with a manure spreader. manure and slurry are natural fertilisers produced by cows and pigs.
Oil-Seed Radish is a special crop that isn’t harvested, but is dug into the ground to enrich the soil instead. Once the plants are visible, you can use a cultivator on your field. this is called ‘green manure’ and works as a fertiliser.
Crop Protection:
After sowing a crop, you’ll see weeds start to grow at the same time as the crop. If you leave things this way, the weeds will reduce the yield of your crop (-20%). Remove weeds using either:
⭐ A weeder during the first growing stage. Use it after the new plants have sprouted before they grow too high.
⭐ A sprayer filled with herbicide.
Soil Care:
⭐ Plows: After you’ve harvested a field, you’ll need to prepare it for the next cycle. You can do this quickly using a cultivator as you did before. You can also create new fields with a plow. You should plow after corn, potatoes, sugar beet and sugarcane crops. Otherwise, the field suffers a -15% yield.
⭐ Lime: Every three harvests, you need to add lime to your fields using a fertiliser spreader. It improves the yield by 15%.
Animal Husbandry:
⭐ Fodder: You need to make fodder to feed your animals. To make bales of:
Use a mower to cut grass. You can find grass to mow almost anywhere, you can also plant your own fields of grass. Dry the grass to make hay using a tedder. Put grass or hay in windrows using a windrower. Press the straw, grass or hay into bales with a baler. Collect the bales with a bale loader.
Chaff are crops chopped by a forage harvester. Chaff can be made from almost any grain: wheat, barley, oat, soy, canola and corn. Chaff behaves the same as grass: you can change it into silage when placed into a silo, it can be used as cow feed when producing total mixed ration. Remember that only corn is cost-efficient enough when producing chaff. To harvest chaff, use forage harvesters (they have separate headers for corn and other grains).
Make sure to:
⭐ Use the appropriate header for the crop.
⭐ Attach a trailer because forage harvesters don’t have internal tanks.
Silage:
Silage can be created in two ways. The first method is as follows: place grass, straw or chaff in silos (built separately or those placed next to the Bio-Gas plant), mow it over with a tractor and cover it with tarp. You can gather the product after 24 hours.
The second method involves bale press and a wrapper – ready bales change their content to silage after 24 hours. Silage is best utilised as an effective cow feed; in fact, it is effective enough to balance the income from the husbandry and the amount of work put in.
Acquiring chaff from corn and converting it to silage is a great, simple and very financially rewarding business. The best approach is to use the silos placed next to the Bio-Gas plant and sell silage there. The price of silage is constant, and as an extra you’ll receive compost that is free of charge. You need to buy the Bio-Gas plant before you can utilise the silos found there.
⭐ You can buy baled silage at the shop.
⭐ Before you cover the silo, you can add and mix various types of silage (grass, straw, chaff).
Total Mixed Ration (TMR):
You can optimise your cows’ milk production by feeding them TMR. TMR is produced by mixing together hay, straw and silage in a Mixer-Wagon. Put two hay bales and one straw bale into the mixer and top up with silage.
Water:
Water is only used to feed the animals. You don’t need to water the fields or use it to clean the vehicles. Water can be acquired from tanks found across the map, privately-owned tanks, or any river or pond found on the map. Water is transported by tanker trailers. Water is required for animal husbandry (all of them, aside from hens) – without it, the production stops completely (but the animals don’t die).
Animal Management:
You can raise hens, sheep, pigs, horses and cows. Every species has different needs and the money is earned from different things. Every animal needs water (except for hens) and regular feeding and cleaning – this involves cleaning up the feed that scatters from the feeders (except for horses, which are cleaned manually, one by one)
⭐ Hens – They only require simple feed (wheat or oat – you can buy it at the shop), produce eggs and reproduce quickly – not a lucrative business, if you decide to raise hens, make sure to raise at least fifty units.
⭐ Sheep – Sheep require grass/straw, with the same production effectiveness. They produce wool stored in easy-to-load stillage’s. A very lucrative and effortless business.
⭐ Horses – Require oat and straw as food (both products can be bought at the shop). You earn money by increasing the value of your stock – up to $50,000 per unit. Their value increases when: they have a supply of both types of food and water, when you ride them regularly (climb on a horse and travel slowly around the map until the “riding” bar is filled in full), clean them after every ride and make sure that they have a supply of straw, which has an impact on the level of cleanliness of your horses.
⭐ Pigs – They have huge needs – to gain 100% of production effectiveness, you need to deliver 7 types of plants. Avoid attempting to keep 100% of effectiveness – make sure you supply corn (50% effectiveness) and additionally one type of grain. You can also buy a special pig feed at the shop, which is a mix offering 100% effectiveness. Pigs produce manure (from straw) and slurry, and you’ll earn a lot of money, as they reproduce quickly.
⭐ Cows – The most demanding animals. They produce a lot of fertiliser, eat a lot of food, you need to look after them often. They produce milk which can be sold at the selling point. Feed them with silage or mixed feed to ensure high effectiveness.
To take care of your animals:
⭐ Give them water
⭐ Feed them
⭐ Change their straw bedding using a straw blower
⭐ Clean around the trough
When animals are content, they reproduce, with the exception of horses, and their off spring are added to your animal population.
A horse’s value is determined by its fitness, health and cleanliness:
⭐ Fitness: Horses should be ridden every day to increase their fitness.
⭐ Cleanliness: Periodically horses need to be brushed and cleaned.
⭐ Health: Horses require straw for clean bedding and water and food to stay healthy.
Forestry:
Tree Planters:
You can use the tree planter to plant several types of trees. To fi ll the planter, you need to buy a pallet of saplings in the shop. Then drive the planter close to the pallet and fill the machine.
Tree Harvesters:
Use a harvester to cut a tree and remove its branches. The wood can be sold or turned into wood chips.
Forwarders:
By using the crane on the forwarder you can put trunks into the loading space and transport them
Wood Chippers:
A wood chipper allows you to cut trunks up into wood chips to sell.
Stump Cutters:
A felled tree leaves behind a stump that can be removed with a stump cutter.
Chainsaws:
Using a chainsaw is a cost-efficient way of cutting down trees. Additionally, you can move small pieces of wood by hand.
Useful Chart:
The production map below from Farming Simulator 19 shows the dependencies between farmed plants and animal husbandry.
Final Thoughts:
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