2011 Nebraska Crop Budgets Updated

2011 Nebraska Crop Budgets Updated

April 4, 2011

The 2011 Nebraska Crop Budgets (EC872) have been updated to to reflect price increases for fertilizer, fuel, and land.  These increases in input costs raised the breakeven price of irrigated corn from $2.95 to $3.26 per bushel and soybeans from $6.36 to $7.07 per bushel, an increase of over 10%, noted Roger Wilson, a UNL Extension Farm Management Budget Analyst. He and Robert Klein, extension western Nebraska crops specialist, prepared the budgets.

Increasing Input Prices

Fertilizer prices fluctuate over time and from one place to another so estimating a representative fertilizer cost is always difficult, Wilson said. Price increases in the latest budgets ranged from 10% for some fertilizer formulations to approximately double for others. Most were somewhere in between.

Fuel prices also fluctuate over time and from one region to another. The price of fuel is so volatile that prices used for projections are usually out-dated before they're published. Wilson said fuel prices in the most recent crop budgets were increased over 10% from earlier estimates.

Land prices also increased significantly. Updated prices from the UNL Nebraska Farm Real Estate Market Development Survey were used for these budgets. While not all land classes are represented, the values of those that were rose from about 15% for non-irrigated land in the Panhandle to almost 25% for average irrigated land in the state.

Accessing the Budgets

To review the whole publication, see EC872 on the UNL Extension Publications Website. This publication provides budgets for 13 crops and 50 cropping systems, as well as tables of power, machinery, labor and input costs used to develop the budgets.  With each budget is an optional column for you to fill in with your actual costs to customize the budget.

Updated 2011 Crop Budgets

The 2010 Nebraska Crop Budgets are expected to be available in late fall 2011.

 

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