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It's Not Just About Costs per Acre, Even in Tight Times

Summary

The current climate of low crop commodity prices is squeezing margins. Some margins might even be negative if crop producers continue with current costs. As a result, crop producers might focus more intensely than usual on managing costs of production. As crop producers consider strategies to reduce costs, they often budget on cost per acre. This is an excellent start – certainly better than no budgeting at all. Focusing only on total costs per acre though might cause producers to overlook important tradeoffs with respect to productivity. It would be easy to lower total costs per acre by simply reducing the amount of various inputs.