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Estimating costs of production for individual crops can be challenging, but an important practice to understand where there might be areas for savings or investment in better inputs. It becomes even more difficult when there are multiple crops grown on a farm. A new online tool is now available to make it easier.
Rutgers farm management specialists and researchers in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics (DAFRE) have a long history of studying and publishing estimated crop production costs to help Garden State growers. The earliest I’ve found on my bookshelf is A.E. 364 “Cost of Producing Selected Processing Vegetables and Grains –South Jersey 1975” from Oct. 1976. Updates with new crops (fresh market vegetables) were published in 1979, 1986 and 1991. Most recently, RCE Farm Management Specialist Dr. Robin Brumfield created an online tool to help growers determine their individual costs with her ‘Crop Rotational Budgets for Three Cropping Systems in the Northeastern United States‘ available on her Rutgers Farm Management website. However, since her retirement, it is unclear how long those sites will be maintained.
The University of Minnesota’s Center for Farm Financial Management is the group that developed the FINPAK farm financial credit analysis toolset back in the 1980s. Retired Salem County Ag Agent Dave Lee developed a successful outreach program assisting his farmers in the use of FINPAK. Today, the CFFM announced the availability of CropCost, “a new, FREE online tool to help producers evaluate the cost of production of their crops on a per unit basis.”
The announcement says, “Users of CropCost can:
• Choose either a specialty crop or commodity crop plan
• Split production and overhead expenses across crops grown
• See breakeven cost of production when yields and expenses change
• Confidently evaluate the cost of production for crops to aid in marketing and pricing decisions
You can create an account at CropCost to start estimating costs immediately, or you can get an idea of how it works from this introductory video.