2016 Nebraska Crop Budgets

By Roger Wilson

The 2016 Nebraska Crop Budgets are complete and available online at:

• Farm and Ranch Management
• CropWatch
•  Nebraska Extension

Four new budgets have been added for dryland corn production in eastern Nebraska.

The breakeven prices for 2016 are lower than they were in 2015 for every budget. The average decline in breakeven prices of the irrigated corn budgets is almost 24 cents per bushel; $4.42 in 2015 compared to $4.19 in 2016. (The apparent discrepancy in the math is because of rounding errors.) The break-even price for irrigated soybean budgets was 44 cents per bushel lower; $10.62 in 2015 compared to $10.18 in 2016.

Lower fuel cost is one reason for the decline in breakeven prices. The price used for fuel in 2015 was $3.25 per gallon compared to $2.25 per gallon in 2016. The fuel price for 2016 appears a little high now because it was obtained in October, 2015; but what it will be in the spring remains to be seen.

Fertilizer is another expense category where prices are lower in 2016 than they were in 2015. Nitrogen price is the main driver for this. The per-pound cost of nitrogen used in the budgets dropped from $0.55 per pound in 2015 to $0.47 per pound in 2016. Monoammonium phosphate has a lower proportion of nitrogen than any of the other fertilizers used in formulating the budgets and its price has changed the least over the past two years.

Prices for herbicides used in the budgets were mixed. Some of the prices for the products used in the budgets were higher and some lower. Some changed substantially, the changes in other price were more modest, and the prices used for some products were unchanged.

The prices for fungicides and insecticides used in the budgets either remained constant or increased modestly.

Land charges on the budgets are calculated by multiplying prices from University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Department of Agricultural Economics’ Farm Real Estate Report times 5% for opportunity cost plus 2% for an estimation of real estate taxes. The 2014-2015 report estimates of farmland prices decreased from a year earlier and these decreases showed up in the lower breakeven prices.

While decreased production costs are good news, they will not completely cover the reduced revenues from decreased crop prices. They do mitigate these revenue losses somewhat and may provide some optimism for the farm economy going forward. The following is a list of some selected budgets and their estimated breakeven prices.

Estimated Breakeven Prices

Source:unl.edu