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: Watermelon (Seeded) — Per Acre — University of Maryland Extension, 2008. Open the source. Printed total cost $2,423.34/acre. Variable total $1,967.34 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 $4,099–$4,370/acre (USDA farm-input price index, 2025 average to August 2026; farm wages brought up separately with USDA's farm wage rates).
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: Watermelon (seeded) 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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Farm in Maryland? Add your records to these benchmarks in Settings → Privacy → Data sharing. It's off unless you turn it on.