Arkansas Crop Profit/Loss Calculator now available for farmers - Talk Business & Politics

Arkansas Crop Profit/Loss Calculator now available for farmers

by George Jared (gjared@talkbusiness.net) 112 views 

Many row crop farmers are facing a bleak 2025 and will need to do everything they can to make a profit. There’s a tool being offered that might help them accomplish that goal.

The Arkansas Crop Profit/Loss Calculator is a web-based decision tool designed to provide producers and other stakeholders with the profit-and-loss potential of producing a crop in Arkansas this year.

“This is a tool I have wanted to create for some time now, but seeing these historically low commodity prices heading into the 2025 growing season had me thinking, ‘What crop can a farmer produce and minimize loss or break even?’” said Hunter Biram, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. “In my travels across the state this winter, I have used the tool to help farmers be informed as to what appears to be the best crop choices.”

Biram said he and fellow Extension Economist Ryan Loy were able to piece the tool together in a few weeks.

“The main feature of the tool is a table which populates with returns net of expenses once users input their county, crop, irrigation practice, and rental agreement,” said Biram. “The resulting table represents operating profit only – those returns above the cost of production.

“Fixed expenses such as capital recovery, taxes and depreciation are not included in the calculations,” said Biram. “A user may input his or her own farm-specific costs to capture these fixed expenses.”

Operating expenses are taken from the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Crop Enterprise Budgets.

The tool only provides tables for county-crop combinations in Arkansas for which yield data is available. Expected yields are calculated based on historical county yield data reported by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service with the earliest year considered being 1960.

The tool uses expected season-average cash prices based on commodity futures contracts and state-level cash prices received. The final expected price is the sum of a 30-day average harvest futures contract and expected basis is determined by taking the average difference between the futures price and state-level cash price received over time.

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