Cost range in today's prices
Pick your state and crop. We take every university budget your state publishes for that crop, bring each one up to today's input prices, and show the range they land in — not one year's single number.
$18,760 – $19,547
From 1 North Carolina budget. Supplies, equipment and land are brought to today's prices with the USDA index of prices farmers pay (2025 average to August 2026). Labor is brought up separately with USDA's farm wage rates (newest annual figure: 2025 average), because that index leaves out wages. Add a percentage if your crew earns more than that.
NC State Extension — Agricultural & Resource Economics · Open the source
Printed in 2025
$18,760
Today
$18,760 – $19,547
Labor share
46%
| Cost group | Printed | Today |
|---|---|---|
| Fertilizer | $748 | $748 – $805 |
| Seed and transplants | $6 | $6 |
| Crop protection | $3,167 | $3,167 – $3,411 |
| Labor | $8,537 | $8,537 |
| Fuel and machinery | $75 | $75 – $81 |
| Other inputs | $4,601 | $4,601 – $4,956 |
| Overhead | $1,626 | $1,626 – $1,751 |
Each budget's labor lines are multiplied by how much USDA farm wage rates have risen since the budget's year, up to the 2025 average. Everything else is multiplied by how much the USDA prices-paid index has risen since the budget's year — once using the 2025 average, once using August 2026. The low and high ends come from those two readings and from every budget your state has for the crop.
We only use your own state's budgets. If your state has none for a crop, the crop isn't listed. Find more budgets on your North Carolina cost page.
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.