Growing Your Bottom Line By .Michael Salassi, PhD. LSU AgCenter: Calculating Farm Machinery Fixed Costs

摘要

One important principle in sound farm management is having an accurate knowledge of the costs of machinery and equipment being utilized on the farm. Accurate information of farm machinery costs is important in making farm planning decisions, crop financing decisions and machinery replacement decisions. There are two basic types of costs associated with farm machinery. Operating (or variable) costs include expenses such as fuel, labor and repairs. These expenses are proportional to the amount of use,on a total annual basis, but are relatively constant on a per unit basis. For example, a tractor which is used in tillage work might be operated 0.1 hours per acre per pass over the field to perform tillage operations, consuming 10 gallons of fuel per hour of use at a diesel cost of 3.00 dollar per gallon. The estimated total annual fuel cost for this operation would be 1,500 dollar over 500 acres and 3,000 dollar over 1,000 acres. However, in both cases, the variable fuel cost per acre for this operation is relatively constant at 3.00 dollar per acre per pass over the field.