What is Profit per Acre?

Profit Per acre is a web app that calculates the profit per acre that your fields are projected to make. It's a breakeven calculator for corn, soybeans, wheat, and other crops. It's web-based, so it's available on all devices that have a modern browser. It benefits you by giving you breakeven prices for your commodities. As you add in your priced commodities (sales you've already made), the numbers recalculate to reflect the breakeven on unpriced bushels.

Needed for Marketing

If you've went to very many marketing meetings, or read the articles written by marketing professionals, one of the things they will say almost every time is that you need to know your cost of production. On your farm. For your crops. Then they gloss over the part of actually getting to this important first step. Profit per Acre helps you get this elusive number for your farm, and the fields and crops on your farm.

Your Data

PPA does require some work from you. Now, it would be nice if it could do all the necessary projection with zero work from you, but that isn't possible at this point. PPA needs some basic data from you. You'll need to enter in your expenses, expected yield, commodity prices, etc. and it calculates profit per acre as well as your breakeven price.

Spreadsheet?

"Ah, ha", you say, "I can do that with my little spreadsheet." And so you can. In fact, the original, first version of PPA was written as a spreadsheet in Excel. But, try PPA out, very likely it will exceed the capabilities of the spreadsheets you may have used or developed.

PPA not only calculates the necessary data for a projected crop, it also allows you to project the total production for a commodity across multiple fields with varied rental agreements. Then, when you've priced some of your production, PPA will give you updated breakeven costs for the unsold commodity, as well as the percentage sold.

Let's say some of your acres look like a model farm this year. The planting was timely, germination was excellent, the fertilizer program was just what the crop needed and the weather was as good as any crop could expect. However, perhaps another field had an adverse weather event. With PPA, on a single page, you can update your yields and immediately have updated breakevens and profit.

It's that kind of ease and speed that allows you to know your cost of production, and to use that knowledge to make better, more confident decisions.