Determine cost of production with the Agricultural Budget Calculator
Last year Nebraska Extension introduced the free Agricultural Budget Calculator (ABC) program. This program is designed to assist agricultural producers in determining their cost of production and projected cash and economic returns for their various farm or ranch enterprises. It is developed by the Center for Agricultural Profitability in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Agricultural Economics. This article comes from recent issues of CropWatch where Glennis McClure and other members of the Center for Ag Profitability Team explained the program and a couple of , specific questions that may come up when using it. How it Works When using ABC, an enterprise can be defined by the user based on what makes sense and fits their operation. Crops may be entered individually or entered field by field, and/or by dryland or irrigated enterprise acres. To break down cost of production information even further, individual field operations and data can be entered. This could be one way to analyze cost and returns field by field for a specified crop. Then, all separate enterprise budgets (field by field or dryland and irrigated) completed for a particular crop, such as corn, will be added together so the user will have a projected cost of production and estimated returns for their total corn production for the production year. This would be similar for soybeans, wheat, or any crop enterprise that producers enter information for into the program. The ability to add livestock enterprise data into ABC will be forthcoming.
