Agricultural Economics Department
Date of this Version
2-12-2020
Citation
agecon.unl.edu/cornhuskereconomics
Abstract
For the 2020 production year, 82 budgets for 15 crops including 2 cover crops are available from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Department of Agricultural Economics. The budgets are published online in two formats including a printable pdf file version and an Excel file version. cropwatch.unl.edu/budgets
Information on crop budgeting procedures, machinery operation and ownership costs, material and service prices, and a crop budget production cost summary is included in the format of each budget. Two new irrigated corn budgets, Numbers 33 and 34, and two new soybean budgets, Numbers 64 and 65, were added for 2020, which reflect production practices and materials using new options for weed management. In four irrigated corn budgets, irrigation systems were converted from diesel power to electric, reflecting changes in practices across Nebraska.
While the crop budgets do not estimate returns with revenue projections, the budgets are based on a projected yield which is used to calculate both a total economic and a cash cost per unit of production.
Cash costs do not include ownership cost of machinery and equipment used in field operations and a real estate opportunity cost. The crop budgets assume that the operator is the landowner by showing an opportunity cost of ownership. Land values from the Nebraska Farm Real Estate Report 2019 are used in the budgets. Those values decreased overall by 1 to 2.5% from 2018. If an operator rents crop ground, land values can be deleted in the Excel worksheet’s variable tab. A cash rent or adjustment for the tenant’s share can be made in the crop budgets along with other expenses that reflect operator costs.