Vegetable cost per acre in North Carolina
2 published NC State Extension — Agricultural & Resource Economics budgets for North Carolina. Every number below is copied from the university's own document — open the source to check it.
Vine Ripe Tomato Budget — 2025 · NC State Extension — Agricultural & Resource Economics
In today's prices: about $18,760–$19,547 per acre.
- Fertilizer$748
- Seed and transplants$6
- Crop protection$3,167
- Labor$8,537
- Fuel and machinery$75
- Other inputs$4,601
- Fixed and land$1,626
Engineering/planning budget built from grower and industry-expert panels, dealer input quotes and university machinery cost coefficients. Not a random-sample farm survey. Open the source.
Sweetpotato — 2025 · NC State Extension — Agricultural & Resource Economics
In today's prices: about $3,165–$3,340 per acre.
- Fertilizer$239
- Seed and transplants$590
- Crop protection$290
- Labor$886
- Fuel and machinery$213
- Other inputs$528
- Fixed and land$419
Fixed cost excludes the budget's separate 7% general overhead line ($192.20/ac).
Engineering/planning budget built from grower and industry-expert panels, dealer input quotes and university machinery cost coefficients. Not a random-sample farm survey. Open the source.
$3,173 per acre
Crops counted: Bell Peppers, Cabbage, Cucumbers, Pumpkins, Squash, Sweet Potato. This is sales, not cost — compare it with the budgets above.
Source: USDA NASS Vegetables 2024 Summary (released February 2025), state tables vege_all_tables.csv.
| Crop | Acres | Yield (lb/acre) | Price ($/lb) | Sales ($/acre) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bell Peppers | 1,800 | 20,500 | $0.44 | $9,102 |
| Cabbage | 2,500 | 30,000 | $0.21 | $6,360 |
| Cucumbers | 8,000 | 14,500 | $0.21 | $3,016 |
| Pumpkins | 4,100 | 11,000 | $0.36 | $3,993 |
| Squash | 3,400 | 9,500 | $0.37 | $3,506 |
| Sweet Potato | 86,500 | 15,000 | $0.20 | $2,955 |
Source: USDA NASS Vegetables 2024 Summary, state-by-crop tables (area harvested, yield per acre, price per cwt), 2024. Fresh-market and processing sales combined, as USDA reports them; prices are what growers received.
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 North Carolina 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: Georgia, Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, 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.