Valuing Sweat Equity and Adding a Person to the Farm, Ag Engage Conference

For most farmers, nailing down a precise cost of production per acre is a difficult task. Although broad ranges, informed guesses, and averages from several previous years are helpful, tight margin years emphasize the need for precise cost accounting. In response to the current margin environment, a team of Agricultural Economics graduate students, with the support of the Indiana Soybean Alliance and the Indiana Corn Marketing Council, developed an interactive tool and a support helpdesk to help Indiana farmers calculate their production costs. Built specifically for Indiana and grounded in region-specific benchmarks across six Indiana production regions (North, Northeast, West Central, Central, Southwest, Southeast), it gives farmers an accurate and locally relevant benchmark.