Gardeners and commercial producers with an extra acre in their backyard or pivot circle corner can “pencil out” vegetable production with more confidence, thanks to a Texas A&M AgriLife and West Texas A&M University collaborative project.
The vegetable production budgets are available at https://tinyurl.com/D1vegetablebudget, then click on “spreadsheet budgets.” The site also includes help files for those unfamiliar with using the spreadsheets.
Dr. Justin Benavidez said while tomatoes and jalapenos are the vegetables featured, these budgets can also serve as a template for other vegetable production. Users can plug in their seed costs or transplant costs per crop, cost for inputs like fertilizer and herbicide, and the price they expect to receive per pound to determine if a particular crop is profitable.
The example budget for outdoor drip-irrigated tomatoes shows a profit of a little over $2,000 an acre, he said. However, because no two operations are the same, the inputs and costs will change for each location. These budgets will help determine where the breakeven point will be on individual operations.
The project also included a survey of traditional and alternative markets that indicated possibilities for local growth and sales of salad greens, okra, strawberries, spinach, pumpkins and squash.
While a full-acre garden would be a significant undertaking for most home gardeners, he said the budgets can be scaled down appropriately since the price per unit of input is included.
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