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.

2008 Maryland Vegetable Enterprise Budgets: Sweet Corn, Fresh Market — Per Acre — University of Maryland Extension, 2008. Open the source. Printed total cost $1,351.43/acre. Variable total $982.43 includes 7% interest on operating capital. Fixed costs use custom hire rates as a proxy for field operation costs. 2008 dollars. In today's prices this budget would run about $2,305–$2,442/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$214
Nitrogen, phosphate, potash
Lime and amendments$15
Lime
Seed and transplants$115
Seed (10 lb)
Cover crop
Crop protection$74
Herbicides (Atrazine, Dual Magnum)
Insecticides (Lannate, Lorsban, Warrior)
Water and pumping$200
Irrigation (5 applications) · fixed
Labor$280
Harvesting labor (40 hr)
Fuel and machinery$104
Field operations at custom rates (plowing, disking, planting, spraying) · fixed
Other inputs$252
Soil test
Crates (250)
Land and overhead$98
Interest on operating capital (7%)
Land charge · fixed
Your totals
Variable cost / acre$982
Fixed cost / acre$369
Total cost / acre$1,351
Total for 1 acre$1,351
Sales / acre$1,800
Left after costs / acre$449
Breakeven price$1.13 per dozen ears

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) in Maryland

Built from real yield records of Maryland 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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