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.

2024 Estimated Costs and Returns per Acre: Cabbage, Fresh Market, Furrow Irrigated, Rio Grande Valley (District 12) — Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, 2024. Open the source. 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. In today's prices this budget would run about $5,405–$5,497/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$233
Phosphorus (46% P2O5)
Ammonium nitrate (34% N)
Seed and transplants$176
Cabbage seed
Crop protection$302
Herbicide (Prefar 4E)
Insecticides (Admire Pro, Lorsban 4E, Asana XL, Lambda)
Fungicides (Bravo Ultrex, Ridomil Gold SC)
Water and pumping$65
Irrigation water
Labor$4,112
Custom harvest ($1.75/carton)
Custom pack and count ($3.50/carton)
Irrigation labor
Tractor labor and unallocated labor
Fuel and machinery$188
Diesel fuel
Repairs and maintenance (tractors, implements)
Machinery depreciation (tractors, implements) · fixed
Interest on equipment investment · fixed
Land and overhead$135
Interest on credit line (8%)
Cash rent, irrigated vegetables · fixed
Your totals
Variable cost / acre$5,014
Fixed cost / acre$196
Total cost / acre$5,210
Total for 1 acre$5,210
Sales / acre$8,250
Left after costs / acre$3,040
Breakeven price$6.95 per carton

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: Cabbage (fresh market, furrow irrigated, Rio Grande Valley) in Texas

Built from real yield records of Texas 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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