Vegetable cost per acre in Texas
1 published Texas A&M AgriLife Extension budget for Texas. Every number below is copied from the university's own document — open the source to check it.
2024 Estimated Costs and Returns per Acre: Cabbage, Fresh Market, Furrow Irrigated, Rio Grande Valley (District 12) · Texas A&M AgriLife Extension
In today's prices: about $5,405–$5,497 per acre.
- Fertilizer$233
- Seed and transplants$176
- Crop protection$302
- Water and pumping$65
- Labor$4,112
- Fuel and machinery$102
- Overhead$25
- Fixed and land$196
Printed total specified cost $5,209.99/acre ($5,014.38 variable including 8% credit-line interest, $195.61 fixed including $110 cash rent). The budget's own breakeven is $6.95 a carton. Carton weight is not stated.
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension planning budget for a 100-acre furrow-irrigated fresh-market cabbage enterprise in the Rio Grande Valley (South Extension District 12). Harvest and packing are custom-hired per carton. A planning guide, not a farm survey; it fits South Texas, not the rest of the state. Open the source.
$6,504 per acre
Crops counted: Cabbage, Cantaloupes, Cucumbers, Onion. This is sales, not cost — compare it with the budgets above.
Source: USDA NASS Vegetables 2024 Summary (released February 2025), state tables vege_all_tables.csv.
| Crop | Acres | Yield (lb/acre) | Price ($/lb) | Sales ($/acre) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cabbage | 4,200 | 21,000 | $0.29 | $6,090 |
| Cantaloupes | 1,900 | 10,000 | $0.28 | $2,830 |
| Cucumbers | 5,200 | 12,500 | $0.30 | $3,775 |
| Onion | 9,500 | 23,500 | $0.38 | $8,930 |
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 Texas 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, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, 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.