THE chief executive of the National Association of Agricultural Contractors (NAAC) has warned that price rises are inevitable.

Duncan Russell said that while prices have not risen significantly since last year, the time is coming that increases are inevitable.

“We are seeing rapidly increasing machinery purchasing costs, alongside hikes in spare parts and tyres, which simply cannot continue to be absorbed by the contracting sector,” he said.

Publishing the 2017 charges, Mr Russell said: “Farming customers are demanding the latest kit, fitted out in many cases with technology to assist them in decision-making and precision application, which all costs.

“Whilst contractors like to work with their customers to provide the professional service they require, this needs to become a closer partnership to allow contractors to make the massive investment in capital costs required to purchase and maintain multi-million pound fleets of machinery.”

Martin Hays, contractor and NAAC chairman, said he just wanted to provide a good service, on time to his customers.

“This is what most contractor’s want, whilst earning a living,” he said. “However, as machinery costs continue to climb, alongside the costs of other inputs I am having to look hard at my charging schedule and other contractors should be doing the same.”

Looking at the longer term, he said machinery costs were not static so neither should contractors charges be.

“Whilst we may be doing ok this year, when it comes to upgrading or trading machines and tractors in coming months and years we may easily find our costs have fallen behind and we cannot make up the shortfall,” said Mr Hays.

“Farmers will have exactly the same problems and we need to work together so that contractors can make those long term investments in labour and kit to keep the farming industry sustainable for the future.”

The current NAAC contracting charges are at naac.co.uk/LatestContractorPricesGuide.