The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Center for Agricultural Profitability has scheduled a series of virtual training workshops for its online Agricultural Budget Calculator tool, to be held through September. In-person workshops are also being planned and will be announced soon.

The Agricultural Budget Calculator (ABC) is a free enterprise-budgeting and decision-making tool that is designed to assist agricultural producers in determining their cost of production and projected cash and economic returns for various farm or ranch enterprises.

Glennis McClure, an extension educator and farm and ranch management analyst with the Center for Agricultural Profitability, said that knowing cost of production is even more critical now, with larger investments being made due to higher input and operation costs.

“Estimating your cost of production can assist in making important management decisions now and throughout the production and marketing year,” McClure said.

McClure, who works closely with the ABC tool and university commodity budgets, will facilitate the workshops. She will demonstrate the program’s features and teach participants how to get started and use the program.

Workshop topics will include downloading and using university crop budgets as a guide; how to create customized crop budgets for owned and rented farms; entering field operations and material inputs to determine costs on a per-farm or field basis; reconciling operation expenses to account for farm totals; creating a cash flow from combined enterprise budgets; and more.

Additional question-and-answer sessions are also being offered. During these scheduled times, McClure will be available on Zoom to answer questions and further assist users with the program.

The workshops are free to attend; however, registration is required. For more about the Agricultural Budget Calculator, and to register for a virtual workshop, visit the ABC site. As more workshop dates are set, the schedule will be updated.  

“Overview of ABC and Whole Farm Features” User Workshop schedule:

• June 22 at 1 p.m. CDT
• June 28 at 5 p.m. CDT
• July 6 at noon CDT
• Aug. 8 at 11 a.m. CDT
• Sept. 6 at 11 a.m. CDT

ABC Q&A sessions schedule:

• June 29 at noon CDT
• July 13 at 1 p.m. CDT
• Aug. 17 at 1 p.m. CDT
• Sept. 8 at 11 a.m. CDT