Foundations for Enterprise Decisions

Welcome to the University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s Ag Budget Calculator (ABC) program for agricultural producers.

ABC is an enterprise budget and decision making tool. Users can view UNL’s crop budgets, or create a log in by registering and entering their own data to create customized enterprise reports that reflect how their farm resources are being allocated.

Individual farm data entered into the program will be kept private and will not be used or shared by the University of Nebraska.

Overview of ABC

The Ag Budget Calculator (ABC) program is designed to assist agricultural producers in determining their cost of production and projected cash and economic returns for their various farm or ranch enterprises.

When using ABC, an enterprise can be defined by the user based on what makes sense and fits their operation.

Crop Budgets

Crops may be entered individually or entered field by field, and/or by dryland or irrigated enterprise acres. To break down cost of production information even further, individual field operations and data can be entered. This could be one way to analyze cost and returns field by field for a specified crop. Then, all separate enterprise budgets (field by field or dryland and irrigated) completed for a particular crop, such as corn, will be added together so the user will have a projected cost of production and estimated returns for their total corn production for the production year. This would be similar for soybeans, wheat, or any crop enterprise that producers enter information for into the program. The ability to add livestock enterprise data into ABC will be forthcoming.

Livestock Budgets

The ability to create enterprise budgets for livestock is available in ABC. At this time, our focus has been on cattle. Budgets for cow-calf herds, backgrounding, finishing, raising breeding stock are all available now in ABC. While we continue to make program enhancements including combining crop and livestock budgets into whole farm budgets, creating individual budgets using ABC is available. Cattle budget examples representing various areas of Nebraska were originally created after meeting with producers and are available to view and download in the program. Users are always encouraged to modify UNL budgets to make them fit their operation. Inputs, equipment, expenses and prices change regularly, so updates are necessary to reflect your current situation.

ABC Tutorials and Help Messaging

The Center for Agricultural Profitability (CAP) website provides information and details on the ABC program.

Included are short “how to” and tutorial videos to guide ABC program users.

Throughout the program, users can click on the blue question marks to read help messages. Our goal in program development was to make ABC user friendly. However, with any new software program, the more it is used, the easier it should become to maneuver around.

Don’t hesitate to reach out for assistance from Glennis McClure, Extension Farm & Ranch Management Analyst, Department of Agriculture Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. gmcclure3@unl.edu or 402.472.0661