Breakeven price per pound
Pick your state and crop. We take that state's university budget, bring it to today's input prices and farm wages, and show the lowest price per pound that still covers every cost.
NC State Extension — Agricultural & Resource Economics, 2025 · Open the source
Breakeven per pound, today
$0.447 – $0.465
Cost per acre, today
$18,760 – $19,547
Printed in 2025: $18,760
At 42,000 lb an acre, you need at least this price on everything you sell to cover costs. The budget itself assumed $0.460 per lb. Lower yield raises the breakeven — try your own.
See and edit the line items →Breakeven price = today's cost per acre ÷ pounds sold per acre. Labor is brought up with USDA farm wage rates (2025 average); everything else with the USDA prices-paid index (2025 average to August 2026).
Pounds per box come only from the budget's own unit (for example "25-lb box"). We don't guess weights the budget doesn't state. Only your own state's budgets are used; if North Carolina has none, see the cost calculator.
Every figure is transcribed from a published land-grant enterprise budget for that state. These are planning budgets built from grower panels and dealer quotes, not surveys of what farms actually spent — your invoices override them everywhere they exist.