Nebraska Crop Budgets to Assist in Making Cropping Systems Decisions.

The 2014 Nebraska Crop Budgets include 66 different budgets. There are 14 alfalfa, 15 corn, 3 dry beans, 4 grain sorghum, 2 grass, 2 millet, 1 oats, 1 pasture, 1 peas, 1 sorghum/sudan, 8 soybeans, 4 sugar beets, 3 sunflower and 7 winter wheat. The Nebraska Crop Budgets are found online at:  http://cropwatch.unl.edu/web/economics/budgets. They can also be accessed by going through the Cropwatch homepage (http://cropwatch.unl.edu/), and the Department of Agricultural Economics homepage, under publications:  http://agecon.unl.edu/.The budgets can be downloaded in two different formats:  as a PDF file or as Excel spreadsheets. The PDF format only permits users to see what has been created. The Excel spreadsheets allow users to change which inputs are used in the budgets, as well as prices. This format allows users to modify the budgets to match specific situations. The budgets also include 5 tables: Table 1.  Power Unit Cost Data, Table 2.  Machinery Cost Data, Table 3.  Material Prices, Table 4.  Conversion of Diesel to Electricity, Propane, Gasoline, and Natural Gas, Table 5.  Table for Adjusting the Amount of Diesel Fuel Required for Center Pivots for Lifts and Pressures Other than the 125 Feed of Lift and 35 psi Used in the Budgets. Real estate costs are calculated by multiplying the price of land, as determined by the annual Nebraska Farm Real Estate Market Survey, times four percent. Another one percent is added for real estate taxes. The budgets provide information to assist the producer and others in selecting crop systems which may be the most profitable for their crop production operation. These budget projections were created using assumptions thought to be valid for many producers in Nebraska; however, each farming operation is unique. The danger of releasing a tool that can subsequently be modified is that there is no way to verify whether alterations were made or unrealistic data was entered. Users of this tool are responsible for independently verifying all results prior to relying on them.