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Finances

2025 Crop Cost and Return Guide

The Purdue Crop Cost and Return Guide offers farmers a resource to project financials for the coming cropping year. These are the February 2025 crop budget estimations for 2025.

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Benchmarking Labor Efficiency and Productivity

Labor costs are one of the most prevalent costs on a farm. As such, farm managers need to evaluate whether they are utilizing labor efficiently and productively. One way to evaluate this issue is to use benchmarks created using data from similar farms. Labor benchmarks should include family and operator labor as well as hired labor.

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Benchmarking Crop Machinery Cost and Investment

The continued increase in size of tractors, combines, and other machinery has enabled farms to operate more acres and reduce labor use per acre. However, this increase in machinery size also makes it increasingly important to evaluate the efficient use of machinery.

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Prospects for Swine Feed Costs in 2025

Interested in recent trends in feed costs for farrow-to-finish and swine finishing enterprises, and projections for 2025? Average feed costs in 2024 were substantially lower than feed costs in 2022 and 2023. Moreover, a further reduction in feed costs is expected for the upcoming year.

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Crop Budget Spreadsheet

This spreadsheet can be used along with the Purdue Crop Cost & Return Guide to examine gross revenue, costs, and earnings for crop enterprises.  The user can evaluate up to three full-season crops, and the wheat double-crop soybean system. Updated February 2025.

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The 2024-25 Financial Downturn: Who is the Most Vulnerable

Midwest crop producers have experienced a significant downturn in corn, soybean, and wheat prices since the beginning of the year and farm incomes are expected to be much lower in 2024 than they have been the last three to four years. Moreover, current expectations are that prices will continue to remain at or below the cost of production for at least a couple more years. Consequently, a key question being asked is as follows: “who is the most vulnerable financially during this downturn”?

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The Economics of Reduced Tillage and Cover Crops: Exploring Aggregated Data

Michael Langemeier presented at the Regional Conservation Finance Ag Educator Training in Arlington, WI on September 16, 2024, on the economics of reduced tillage and cover crops.

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Conventional & Organic Enterprise Net Returns, FINBIN data from 2019 to 2023

This article summarizes net returns for conventional and organic crop enterprises using FINBIN data from 2019 to 2023. Organic corn and soybean enterprises had lower crop yields, higher crop prices and gross revenue, and higher net returns. However, there was a much wider difference in enterprise net returns among organic corn and soybean enterprises than there was among conventional corn and soybean enterprises.

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Navigating Farm Loan Interest Rates

Host Brady Brewer, accompanied by guests Dr. Jennifer Iftt, Dr. Noah Miller, and Dr. Gerald Mashange, explore how agricultural loan interest rates vary among lenders. In this Purdue Commercial AgCast episode, they unpack a series of recent FarmDoc articles dissecting the nuances of interest rates in ag loans across various groups of lenders, geographic regions, and different types of farms.

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Interest Rate Dilemma – Fixed or Variable

The current farm demand for long-term loan products seems to suggest some farm borrowers are anticipating lower future interest rates. Farm borrowers should carefully consider their exposure to interest rate changes when choosing long-term loan products.

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