It's not really a surprise. Most input costs for Nebraska crop producers have increased again this year.
The 2013 Nebraska crop budgets have been updated and cover 16 crops and 53 separate budgets. They are available in the "Economics and Marketing" section of UNL's CropWatch—cropwatch.unl.edu/web/economics/budgets--and in the "Crop Budget" section of the Department of Agricultural Economics website--agecon.unl.edu.
"One of the challenges in estimating the budgets is determining prices for materials used in production," says Roger Wilson, Extension farm management and enterprise budget analyst. "We accomplished this by visiting with suppliers who share their price expectations."
UNL Updates Budgets For 53 Nebraska Crops
For corn, this increase varies from 7% to 13%, with the largest increase in conventionally produced, dryland continuous corn. A number of corn budgets show a 7% cost increase, most of which are no-till or reduced till systems.
Cost increases for soybean range from 12% to 20%. The budget with the lowest per acre cost increase is for a gravity-irrigated, ridge-till system. The budget showing the highest cost increase is the pivot-irrigated, no-till system using Roundup Ready seed grown after corn, according to Wilson.
The no-till fallow budget showed the least increase in cost (5%) for wheat production while no-till following a row crop showed the most (12%).
In addition to estimating a total cost of production per acre, each budget also shows the cash costs of production. While these budgets do not estimate returns, they are based on a given yield which is used to calculate both a total and a cash cost per unit of production.
While most input costs have risen, this year the fertilizer prices used are generally lower than last year, except for anhydrous ammonia, Wilson says.