Individual Enterprise Budgets and Whole Farm Planning
Creating a master plan for your farm and budgets for each enterprise may seem at first like an overwhelming task, depending on the complexity of your farm. If you can begin with one enterprise and learn the process, you’ll gain confidence and proficiency to tackle further complexity. Best-guess estimates and back-of-the-envelope calculations can serve as good starting points as you learn the process.
Ideally, the information you gain from an accurate economic assessment of your farm will help you achieve all your farm’s goals. Keeping your assessment up to date has the added benefit of showing you how your farm is performing over time. A complete set of enterprise budgets that together create a whole farm financial picture will help you measure impacts and make informed choices as you navigate the constantly changing variables in agriculture.
Resources
The resources listed here are only examples of the many tools you can use to track costs and returns as you put together enterprise budgets. In addition, local and state Extension offices have many resources available on enterprise budgeting.
From Iowa State University
- Iowa State University Ag Decision Maker page
- A list of Ag Decision Maker tools for a wide range of scenarios
- Organic crop production enterprise budgets
Machinery Cost Calculators
- Iowa State University’s Estimating Farm Machinery Costs (includes an Excel tool and instructions)
- The University of Idaho AgBiz website includes a machinery cost calculator (this link is for an Excel file download)
From the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service
- Production Costs by Topic and Region
- Commodity Costs and Returns, current and historical
- Further resources and publications
From the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- General page listing reports, publications, and other tools
- Quick Stats interactive database for current and historical agricultural statistics by state, region, commodity, etc.