As we move into fall and winter, farmers will begin planning for next year’s crops.  Investing time into estimating the costs of production is one of the steps in the planning process.  Knowing this information can be an important part of determining how many acres of each crop to plant.  Cost of production information is helpful to determine breakeven costs per acre and unit of production for marketing the crop and farmland rental discussions.

To assist farmers with estimating their production costs, the UW-Madison Division of Extension has released a new UW Crops Enterprise Budget spreadsheet tool. The new budget tool includes example budgets for nine different commonly grown field crops including haylage, dry hay, corn silage, small grains for grain and forage in addition to corn grain and soybeans.  A fertilizer cost calculator is also included in the new budgeting tool. 

The budget sheets are set up to be reasonably intuitive and do many of the calculations for the user to minimize the need for a calculator or a pad of paper and pencil. There are helpful hints in each enterprise budget to assist users enter in their data.

Users will find the inputs in several sections the same across the different crop example sheets for familiarity even though some types of inputs will not be used for some of the crops. There are multiple lines for several pest control applications because some years may require additional passes depending on pest pressure.

The field operations (machinery) section is set up to include all costs associated with an operation in one line rather than break out depreciation, repairs, fuel, operator etc. into individual costs.  Several resources are listed in the spreadsheet to assist users with determining machinery costs.

The budgets are set up to provide a reasonable amount of flexibility.  Specifically, in the forage budgets, harvest costs may be entered on a per acre, per hour, per bale or per ton cost basis.

Access the tool!

The new crops enterprise budget tool can be found at: https://cropsandsoils.extension.wisc.edu/article-topic/economics-budgets-financial/