by: Barry Ward, Leader, Production Business Management, Ohio State University Extension
Budgeting helps guide you through your decision making process as you attempt to commit resources to the most profitable enterprises on the farm. Crops or Livestock? Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, Hay? We can begin to answer these questions with well thought out budgets that include all revenue and costs. Without some form of budgeting and some method to track your enterprises’ progress you’ll have difficulty determining your most profitable enterprise(s) and if you’ve met your goals for the farm.
Budgeting is often described as “penciling it out” before committing resources to a plan. Ohio State University Extension has had a long history of developing “Enterprise Budgets” that can be used as a starting point for producers in their budgeting process. Newly updated Enterprise Budgets for 2018 have been completed and posted to the farmoffice website: https://farmoffice.osu.edu/farm-management-tools/farm-budgets
Enterprise Budget projections updated for 2018 include: Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, Alfalfa Hay; Alfalfa Haylage, Corn Silage, Swine – Farrow to Wean, and Swine –Wean to Finish.
Our enterprise budgets are compiled on downloadable Excel Spreadsheets that contain macros for ease of use. Users can input their own production and price levels to calculate their own numbers. These Enterprise Budgets have color coded cells that allow users to plug in numbers to easily calculate bottoms lines for different scenarios. Detailed footnotes are included to help explain methodologies used to obtain the budget numbers.