Penn State Extension Educators are helping dairy and crop farmers calculate and monitor their own actual costs to produce corn and haylage crops
There are two options available, the “Monthly Cash Flow Planner” and the “Crop Enterprise Budget.” Both tools are available online with YouTube videos that you can refer back to.
Feed Costs are still one of our primary financial areas to make improvements on the dairy farm. We can help you calculate your income over feed cost and calculate a cost per ton of produced feed. These spreadsheets are available by clicking here.
The Crop Enterprising Budget spreadsheet is a simplified version of the dairy cash flow “Rations and Crops” sheet that looks at only the section to determine the Cost of Home-Raised Grains and Forages.
The Crop Enterprising Budget spreadsheet can be used to charge the direct production costs to the crops produced and to split out a share of the whole farm overhead costs involved in producing grains and forages. The worksheet takes a cash flow approach to this issue since it uses Owner Draw and Principal and Interest in the calculations
The cash flow provides a guide for both the manager and farm advisors to understand what it takes for the farm to achieve profitable income levels and to experience adequate cash flow. But developing the cash flow plan is only the first step and, since business conditions constantly change, the producer must review the plan against actual performance on a regular basis in order to make the adjustments needed to achieve or improve on planned outcomes. The process is repeated each year as another business cycle begins.
Source: PSU