Vegetable cost per acre in Colorado

In today's prices: about $10,044–$10,760 per acre.

• Fertilizer$1,166
• Seed and transplants$591
• Crop protection$2,591
• Water and pumping$36
• Labor$735
• Fuel and machinery$2,678
• Other inputs$710
• Overhead$284
• Fixed and land$471

Printed direct costs $8,891.72/acre plus a $370 land charge. At the budget's own price and yield, CSU shows a loss of $1,456.72/acre after land. Western Slope only; Front Range costs differ.

CSU ABM enterprise budget of average costs and returns for the 2024 crop year in Western Colorado. A planning budget, not a farm survey. Open the source.

Open these line items in the calculator →

$5,976 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.

Source: USDA 2022 Census of Agriculture, Table 1 state highlights (vegetables, melons, potatoes and sweet potatoes: value of sales / acres harvested for sale, 2022).

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 Colorado 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.