Cost per acre calculator

Pick your state and crop to start from a published university budget, line by line. Change any number to match your own farm — your numbers replace theirs.

University of Delaware Sweet corn (fresh market, hand-harvested) budget — 2025 — University of Delaware Cooperative Extension, 2025. Open the source. 2025 Delaware budget. Variable total shown includes harvest and packing at the expected yield. Printed total $2,600.15/acre. Packed 5 dozen ears per crate. In today's prices this budget would run about $2,600–$2,686/acre (USDA farm-input price index, 2025 average to August 2026; farm wages brought up separately with USDA's farm wage rates).

Line items per acre
Fertilizer$193
Nitrogen
Phosphorous
Potassium
Boron
Lime and amendments$63
Lime (prorated over 3 years)
Sulfur
Seed and transplants$331
Seed
Crop protection$107
Herbicide - Bicep II Magnum
Insecticde - Baythroid XL
Insecticde - Beseige
Insecticde - Lannate
Water and pumping$75
Irrigation (fixed costs) · fixed
Irrigation (operating costs) · fixed
Labor$1,481
Harvest and packing at expected yield
Fuel and machinery$175
Applying Fertilizer Broadcast · fixed
Applying Chemicals Ground · fixed
Tillage (Chisel) · fixed
Disk & Harrowing · fixed
Planting · fixed
Side-dress · fixed
Cultivating · fixed
Other inputs$24
Interest on Variable Costs
Land and overhead$150
Land Charge · fixed
Your totals
Variable cost / acre$2,200
Fixed cost / acre$400
Total cost / acre$2,600
Total for 1 acre$2,600

Sales / acre$2,880
Left after costs / acre$280
Breakeven price$0.16 per ear

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.

Planning several crops? Use the crop profitability planner. Want profit against your state's real sales figures? Open the profit per acre calculator.

Pooled farmer benchmark: Sweet corn (fresh market, hand-harvested) in Delaware

Built from real yield records of Delaware farms that chose to share their data. A figure only appears once 5 or more farms have logged the same crop and season, so no single farm can be identified.

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