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.

Rutgers Table 33: Costs and Returns for Sweet Corn (Mid to Late Season), Per Acre — 1996 — Rutgers Cooperative Extension — Farm Management, 1996. Open the source. Printed total cost $1,715.07/acre including a 7% management fee of $101.08 (carried as a line below). Variable total $1,491.73 includes 10% interest on operating capital. 1996 dollars. In today's prices this budget would run about $4,521–$4,792/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$113
Lime and soil test
Fertilizer (N, P, K)
Seed and transplants$90
Seed (12 lb)
Crop protection$284
Herbicides (Bladex, Dual)
Insecticides (Asana, Lannate, Sevin, Warrior, Lorsban)
Water and pumping$192
Overhead irrigation operating cost
Labor$335
Operator labor
Seasonal harvest labor
Packing and grading
Fuel and machinery$66
Cultivating (3 passes)
Diesel fuel
Tractor and implement repair
Tractors · fixed
Implements · fixed
Other inputs$406
Packing crates
Selling charge (3% of gross)
Land and overhead$229
Interest on operating capital (10%)
Management fee (7%)
Land charge · fixed
Your totals
Variable cost / acre$1,593
Fixed cost / acre$122
Total cost / acre$1,715
Total for 1 acre$1,715
Sales / acre$2,016
Left after costs / acre$301
Breakeven price$7.15 per crate (5 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 (mid to late season, conventional) in New Jersey

Built from real yield records of New Jersey 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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