Vegetable cost per acre in Arkansas
No university in Arkansas publishes a full vegetable budget with yield and price that we could find. University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture does publish 3 cost-only sheets, shown below. We don't borrow another state's numbers.
About these cost-only sheets
These 2017 sheets list what it costs to grow an acre, but leave yield and price blank for each farm to fill in. Without a yield and price, we can't work out profit or a breakeven price, so they aren't used in the profit, breakeven or cost range tools. Use them to check your own costs. The costs are in 2017 prices, with labor at about $10–$13 an hour, so today's costs will be higher.
University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture · John McMinn, Dr. Ron Rainey, Dr. Amanda McWhirt · 6 ft rows, drip irrigation (7,260 ft of tape per acre)
$14,337.36 per acre, 2017 prices
| Custom work | $1,600.00 |
| Fertilizer | $385.32 |
| Fungicide | $133.50 |
| Herbicide | $18.13 |
| Insecticide | $199.78 |
| Seed and plants | $880.00 |
| Other supplies* | $4,736.80 |
| Irrigation supplies | $1,427.52 |
| Labor (all hand, packing and operator labor) | $4,216.42 |
| Diesel fuel | $59.85 |
| Repair and maintenance | $83.09 |
| Interest on operating money | $101.21 |
| Direct costs | $13,841.62 |
| Fixed costs (equipment ownership) | $495.74 |
| Total | $14,337.36 |
*Plastic mulch, wood stakes, string, tomato boxes and buckets.
No yield or price on this sheet, so no profit or breakeven is shown. Open the original sheet.
Open these line items in the calculator — enter your own yield and price to see what's left after costs.
University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture · John McMinn, Dr. Ron Rainey, Dr. Amanda McWhirt · 6 ft rows, drip irrigation (7,260 ft of tape per acre)
$12,026.67 per acre, 2017 prices
| Custom work | $233.75 |
| Fertilizer | $318.60 |
| Fungicide | $62.49 |
| Herbicide | $26.65 |
| Insecticide | $63.43 |
| Seed and plants | $2,550.00 |
| Other supplies* | $5,678.98 |
| Irrigation supplies | $823.26 |
| Labor (all hand, packing and operator labor) | $1,671.99 |
| Diesel fuel | $52.44 |
| Repair and maintenance | $14.08 |
| Interest on operating money | $150.89 |
| Direct costs | $11,646.56 |
| Fixed costs (equipment ownership) | $380.11 |
| Total | $12,026.67 |
*The sheet doesn't itemize this line on its summary page; see the source for details.
No yield or price on this sheet, so no profit or breakeven is shown. Open the original sheet.
Open these line items in the calculator — enter your own yield and price to see what's left after costs.
University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture · John McMinn, Dr. Ron Rainey, Dr. Amanda McWhirt · 5 ft rows, drip irrigation (8,712 ft of tape per acre)
$5,720.62 per acre, 2017 prices
| Fertilizer | $205.07 |
| Fungicide | $124.80 |
| Herbicide | $72.53 |
| Insecticide | $12.40 |
| Seed and plants | $238.08 |
| Other supplies | $2,038.20 |
| Irrigation supplies | $878.01 |
| Labor (all hand, harvest and operator labor) | $1,514.82 |
| Diesel fuel | $67.41 |
| Repair and maintenance | $63.78 |
| Interest on operating money | $35.24 |
| Direct costs | $5,250.34 |
| Fixed costs (equipment ownership) | $470.28 |
| Total | $5,720.62 |
No yield or price on this sheet, so no profit or breakeven is shown. Open the original sheet.
Open these line items in the calculator — enter your own yield and price to see what's left after costs.
$4,599 per acre
All vegetables, melons and potatoes sold in the state, divided by the acres harvested for sale, 2022. This is sales, not cost — compare it with the budgets above.
USDA's 2024 vegetable survey prints no crop-by-crop figures for Arkansas, so there are no per-crop yield or price numbers here.
Arkansas yield and price page →University budgets are planning budgets: extension economists price a typical acre from grower panels and dealer quotes. They are not surveys of what farms actually spent. Your own invoices are always better.
Older budgets also show a range in today's prices, using the USDA index of prices farmers pay for supplies (2025 average to August 2026). That index leaves out farm wages, so each budget's labor lines are brought up separately using USDA's farm wage rates (newest annual figure: 2025).
We never fill a gap with another state's budget. If Arkansas has no budget for a crop, the tools show none.
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.
Want to change the numbers for your farm? Open the cost per acre calculator. Other states: North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Nevada, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey.