Source: KANSAS STATE UNIV submitted to
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ORGANIC CROP BUDGETING TOOL TO HELP ADVISE PRODUCERS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1010457
Grant No.
2016-51106-25716
Cumulative Award Amt.
$369,853.00
Proposal No.
2016-06199
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2016
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2021
Grant Year
2016
Program Code
[112.E]- Organic Transitions
Project Director
Ibendahl, G. A.
Recipient Organization
KANSAS STATE UNIV
(N/A)
MANHATTAN,KS 66506
Performing Department
Ag Economics
Non Technical Summary
Budgets are one of the most important tools producers use when deciding on which crops to grow. Even producers growing conventional crops, with which they have much experience, rely on crop budgets. Crop budgets are some of the most requested publications that Extension specialists publish. Producers receptive to growing organic crops face two hurdles: first, very few organic crop budgets exist; and two, these producers have no experience growing organic crops. Thus, there is much uncertainty about the production practices, the cost of inputs, and the profitability of organic crops. These producers need a tool which can generate an organic crop budget so that they can assess the profitability of organic crops for their farm operations. Without a way to eliminate some of the uncertainty about organic profitability, potential organic producers will probably continue to grow conventional crops. Our objective in this proposal is to determine the production practices of organic producers, collect price information about the needed inputs, develop a crop budgeting tool, and produce organic crop budgets so that the profitability of organic crops can be estimated for a producer. This contribution is significant because we are developing a regionalized database of inputs and prices for organic crop production that doesn't currently exist and integrating this database into an organic crop budgeting tool that will make it significantly easier for producers and Extension personnel to estimate organic profitability. This project addresses the recently added priority area for development of educational tools for Cooperative Extension personnel.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
60160303010100%
Knowledge Area
601 - Economics of Agricultural Production and Farm Management;

Subject Of Investigation
6030 - The farm as an enterprise;

Field Of Science
3010 - Economics;
Goals / Objectives
The long-term goal is to provide the most effective decision aids and the most complete and accurate information about the profitability of organic crops so that any potential producer of organic crops can make good decisions about whether or not to actually grow organic crops. Our objective in this proposal is to determine the production practices of organic producers, collect price information about the needed inputs, develop a crop budgeting tool, and produce organic crop budgets so that the profitability of organic crops can be estimated for a producer.The specific objectives of the project are:Identify the production practices and the inputs required for a range of organic crops and regions of the country. ?Our approach will be to identify a contact (probably a state Extension specialist) from a state or several states within a USDA-ERS farm resource region (9 regions in all) and survey them to find the production practices used for some of the major organic crops within each region. ?Develop a database of organic inputs and prices of those inputs on a regional.Our approach will be to take the inputs identified from objective (1) and build a regional price database by calling input suppliers for their cost to purchase the inputs. Where prices of inputs don't readily exist (i.e., manure), techniques based on a review of literature will be used. ?Develop an organic crop budgeting tool that is clear, easy to use, and that produces accurate, timely, and relevant information about the revenue and expenses for organic crops?Our approach will be to take the Kansas State Budget Generator (which is an offshoot of the Mississippi State Budget Generator) and modify it to include all the inputs needed for organic production and to allow it to generate budgets that vary by region. ?Develop a set of organic budgets for the major organic crops in each of the regions used in objective (1).Our approach will be to take the production practices identified in objective (1), the crop budgeting tool and prices identified in objectives (2) and (3), and produce a set of regional organic crop budgets for the major organic crops. ?Distribute the organic crop budgeting tool developed in objective (3) and the organic crop budgets developed in objective (4) to Extension personnel across the countryOur approach will be to take organic crop budgeting tool and the associated budgets that were produced and first make them available on the Kansas State University AgManager.info website. Next the tool and the budgets will be provided to state Extension specialists across the country who work with budgets or organic crops.
Project Methods
METHODSCollecting feedback - Because the organic crop budgeting tool being developed will be hosted on one of the leading farm management sites (AgManager.info), it should receive a lot of exposure. We plan to build into the budgeting tool a frontend link that asks for feedback. This link should work something like the links that many mobile apps provide when those apps first open. If users follow the provide link on the startup screen of the organic budget generator, they will be taken to a page where they can rate the tool and provide feedback.We plan to also work with other state Extension specialists and gather their feedback directly or have those specialists help us identify end users of the organic budgeting tool. The feedback and suggestions we gather will help direct the tool as it develops. An initial version of the organic budgeting tool is planned after year one of this project and it will be improved based on feedback during the remainder of the project.Activities - Before any organic budgets can be developed, the major organic crops within a region must be identified along with the inputs that are being used to grow these crops. We plan to use the nine USDA-ERS farm resource regions: Eastern Uplands, Heartland, Southern Seaboard, Northern Crescent, Fruitful Rim, Northern Great Plains, Basin and Range, Prairie Gateway, and Mississippi Portal. Within these nine regions, we will identify five of the major organic crops for a particular region. With nine regions and five organic crops per region, we will have 45 sets of production practices to identify. A set of surveys and telephone calls to key state Extension specialists within each region will help us identify the needed production practices.Budeting tool - A key technique of the budget generator tool is treating each trip across the field as a separate input item. Thus producers and Extension personnel can think about production practices in a sequential manner as they develop budgets. For each field trip, users can input the type of machinery operation and also any inputs used. This sequential approach is a time tested method of generating budgets and was first developed for the Mississippi State Budget Generator. None of the spreadsheet budgeting tools approach their budgets in a similar fashion. The result is a budget that is less prone to errors.The generation of production practices, the list of inputs, and the price of those inputs will be done though surveys and direct communication with state Extension specialists. Some of the pricing information may require a review of literature to determine the appropriate pricing technique. Manure pricing is an example of an input where prices may not be directly available.Monitor and evaluation of Research, Extension, and Education activities - The budgeting tool will include a link on the introduction screen that will take users to a site where they can provide feedback and rate the tool. As we expect to have the first version of the tool posted to the AgManager.info website by the end of the first year, we will have two years to generate feedback. Also, on the AgManager.info site we will have links posted requesting feedback along with any printed versions of the budgets.We also plan to send out surveys to state Extension personnel working on budgets to gauge their feedback to the budgeting tool and the budgets. Finally, we will have the limited set of currently available organic budgets to use as a check on the regional budgets we produce. There should be agreement with the expected costs and returns.

Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/21

Outputs
Target Audience: The final target audience is to reach Extension agents and organic producers themselves with a decision making tool that will help organic producers develop a crop budget. Because organic crop budgeting is just a subset of traditional crop budgets, our tool was expanded to handle any kind of crop budget. As a result, we are reaching non-organic farmers and farmers who are looking to transition to organic crop production.We did interact with organic growers in Kansas to determine their crops and what they are interested in. The graduate student working on this project also used a test farm in Illinois to identify some of the issues with converting to organic We have presented preliminary results of our work at several academic conferences including the SAEA (Southern Agricultural Economics Association) meetings and the WAEA (Western Agricultural Economics Association) meetings. In addition we have presented at the Kansas State Risk and Profit conference which is a two day conference for farmers, lenders, and others working in agriculture. This conference typically has 150 people attend. We have also demonstated this tool to the Kansas Extension agents and shown them how they can use this tool. A series of instructional videos is posted on AgManager so that anyone interested in using the tool can get up to speed. We were able to reach farmers, lenders, Extension specialists, students, and others interested in agriculture and budgets by posting informantion on AgManager.info. The AgManager.info site is one of the leading sources of agricultural information across the country. While AgManager may not be quite as well know as FarmDoc, the AgManager site does have a broad reach and most people connected with agriculture have used the site. K-State is one of the leading universities producing crop budgets and this tool helps provide access to the variables that farmers need to evaluate the profitability of various crop practices using a variety of production practices including both conventiaonal and organganic crop budgets. Our budgets are especially valuable to those producers looking to analyyze those budgets in more detail as we provide a database of inputs that go down to the specific input level Changes/Problems:Covid limited the opportunities to develop specific budgets outside of Kansas. However, the organic budgeting tool is fully fuctional and producers should be able to easlily develop their own crop budgets. The abilityto compare a non-organic budget to an organic budget should be of great interest to those looking to transition to organic production. There are currently a series of videos on YouTube (via AgManager) that explain how to use the tool. These instructional videos will be expanded to include more detail about developing a budget from scratch or modifying an existing budget to make it fit a specific region. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This crop budgeting tool has been demonstrated extensively in Kansas both to producers and county Extension agents. In addition, the tool has been shown to Extension professionals from other states at various meetings. AgManger has links to instructional videos that can help a new user learn how the tool works.There are additional trainings planned within Kansas for use of the budgeting tool. These trainings will also be provided on AgManger.info as they occur. Because this tool is also used to generate the 60 or so crop budgets that Kansas State produces each year, the tool is in continual refinement with ongoing education. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?All of the tools are available on AgManager.info. These include the budget generator tool and the machinery cost tool. The instructional videos are linked from AgManager back to YouTube What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The major accomplishments of this project were to develop an organic crop budgeting tool and a database of organic inputs and prices. There is no other tool in the country that can help a producer estimate the cost to produce an organic crop just by inputting the steps of production like the tool developed here. The tool has a full database of machinery information and a limited set of organic inputs already in place. In addition, users can add their own specific machinery or their specific inputs and the budgeting tool will take care of the cost calculations, the unit conversions, and generate the appropriate cost per acre for the production step. The budget generation process is easy for most users as nearly all budgets can be produced by using a set of drop-down menus. Only a few quantities are actually required to be entered during the budget generation process. To develop these tools and databases, we examined crops across the county. There were also two offshoots of this project. The first offshoot was the development of a machinery cost tool. This is built into the budget generating tool but was spun off as a separate deliverable since mechanized weed control is important to organic crop producers. The second was a crop budget and leasing too. This tool uses the budgets from the budget generator to examine combination of crops and various lease arrangements. Until this project started, there was only one tool in the country that helped producers develop their own crop budgets, the Mississippi State Budget Generator. The Mississippi tool, however, was at least 30 years old and was developed in FoxPro. The tool has not seen any development in the last 20 years and FoxPro has long been unavailable. The result is the Mississippi State Budget Generator is difficult to use compared to modern software. In addition, the tool has no ability to limit inputs for organic production. Nearly all other crop budgets in the country are either hard copy PDF files or possibly an Excel spreadsheet. While many of these allow a user to input their own numbers, that kind of input assumes a user actually knows what that cost is. For some things like fertilizer, that might be fairly simple. However, because organic production relies on a great deal of machine usage for weed control, the issue is much bigger. Estimating the machinery costs is probably the most difficult part of a crop budget as it involves not only the variable costs like fuel and labor but it also requires estimating the fixed costs that go along with owning and using a machine and implement. Agricultural engineers have developed formulas that can calculate these costs but the formulas are complicated and a typical producer has little interest in spending hours estimating machinery costs. The end result is that a typical crop budget published on the web, is difficult to modify. Trying to develop a new budget from scratch is nearly impossible with the available tools. The ability to develop a crop budget from scratch is where the organic crop budget developed as part of this grant really shines. To develop a crop budget, producers have 5 stages to go through. First, there is a page to enter some basic crop information like the budget name, date, and interest rates. The second page is where the crop output is selected. This includes the expected quantity and the price. This second page is what generates the gross revenue. The third page in where production inputs like fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, etc. are selected. The user just needs to enter the quantity as the rest of the process is via drop-down menus. Because this tool can do both organic and conventional crop budgets, there is a switch users can check to limit available inputs to just organic inputs. The fourth page is where the machinery operations are entered. This is entered again via drop-down menus. The user just needs to input the number of trips. Users have the option of either using a custom rate or their own machinery for a particular field operation. The budget tool itself takes care of all the calculations that go into producing a cost per acre for a specific field trip with a specific set of equipment. The tool calculates the labor, fuel, repair, and fixed cost on a per acre basis. The last page is to combine any budgets together and then print them out. The back-end databases are readily accessible to users and the budget tool makes it easy to add new machines and inputs. This is especially important as many organic products use speciality products that vary greatly by price. Specific objectives: 1) identify production practices and inputs: These vary widely but machinery use is much more prevalent with organic crop production as there are limited weed control options for organic producers. We identified an entire range of equipment as part of this process. 2) develop a database of organic inputs and prices: We have made the database of inputs readily available to users and the process of adding new inputs and machines is straight forward. Users can adjust the current set of input prices if needed. The database side of the budgeting tool has seven sections: 1) Universal inputs - This page has the fuel prices and the interest rates. 2) Products page - This page is where the end products are listed. While products can be entered directly into the budget section. The database side allows a user to store an end product for use in other crop budgets. 3) Various labor rates per hour are stored here. Currently the database includes operator labor, irrigation labor, additional labor, harvest labor and other labor. Users can add more labor types as needed. 4) Custom operations - This part of the database consists of custom operation surveys from both Iowa and Kansas. Included in these surveys is a wide range of custom rates for a wide variety of field operations. The custom operations are divided into 13 categories. Users can add their own rates if needed. 5) Machinery - This page has all the machinery cost information for a wide variety of tractors, harvesters, and implements. There are also a wide variety of sizes. Implements are already matched with a tractor. If a user wants to add their own specific machinery, they need to include the cost, life, salvage value, and hours per year. The rest of the needed inputs are fairly standard across equipment. New tractors are require a fuel consumption per hour. Based on this information, the calculator can calculate the labor, fuel, repair and maintenance and fixed costs both on a per hour and per acre basis. 6) Op Inputs - This page has the operating inputs like seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Because many inputs can't be used in organic production, each input has a check box to indicate if allowed for organic production. This prevents a user from accidentally choosing a non-organic input for an organic budget. 7) Irrigation - This page has the cost of irrigation equipment. It is very similar to the machinery page. 3) develop an organic crop budgeting tool: We fully addressed this objective with a tool that exceeded what was planned. The spin off tools are extras that came about. 4)develop organic budgets for crop regions: Because of covid, this objective was not fully realized. When exploring crop budgets across the U.S. it was obvious they varied tremendously. Thus a single budget for a region wouldn't be that helpful. However, because of the ease of the budget development and the example budgets included, tailoring a budget to a specific crop in a specific region shouldn't be difficult. 5) distribute the budgeting tool: The crop budgeting tool has been distributed through AgManager.info at Kansas State University. This site has a wide reach and is a go-to site for many Extension professionals as well as farmers. In addition, this tool has been demonstrated in Extension meetings and at professional workshops. There are instructional videos available on YouTube.

Publications

  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Ibendahl, G., Directions for Using the Fertilizer Cost Tool. AgManager publication  March 2017.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2021. Kansas Crop Cost of Production Estimates in 2021. Mini Risk & Profit Conference, Department of Agricultural Economics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS. March 3, 2021.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. General Overview of the Kansas State Budget Generator. Instructional video about KSBG. 12/10/20.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. How to Make Changes to a Budget. Instructional video about KSBG. 12/10/20.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. How to Create a New Crop Budget. Instructional video about KSBG. 12/10/20.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. How to Combine Budgets into a Single Printed Budget. Instructional video about KSBG. 12/10/20.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. How to Print Crop Budgets. Instructional video about KSBG. 12/10/20.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. and D. OBrien. 2020. New 2021 KSU Crop Budgets, Machinery Cost Tool and Lease Tool. Presentation at 2020 Agricultural Economics Agent Update Training. Tonys Pizza Event Center, Salina, KS. 12/17/20.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: bendahl, G. and T. Griffin. 2021 (forthcoming). Machinery Replacement Strategies. Journal of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Carls, E., G. Ibendahl, T. Griffin, and E. Yeager. "Factors Affecting Net Farm Income". 2018 Risk and Profit Conference presentation, Manhattan Kansas. August 2018.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Carls, E., T. Griffin, and G. Ibendahl. "Farm Management Implications of Transitioning from Conventional to Organic Production: An Application of Whole-farm Linear Programming Model to Examine Transition Period." 2018 Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Jacksonville, FL. February 3-6, 2018.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Carls, E., T. Griffin, G. Ibendahl, and E. Yeager. "Transitioning from Conventional to Organic Production." 2018 Western Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anchorage, AK. June 24-26, 2018.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ibendahl, G. "USDA Expense Indexes" AgManager publication K-State University. 2.14.19
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ibendahl, G. and T. Griffin. "What Makes a Top Farm." Selected paper at the 2019 NFBM Conference. June 9-13, 2019 Sheboygan, WI.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ibendahl, G., and T. Griffin. "Top Farms and the Effect of Debt" AgManager publication K-State University. 3.25.19
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ibendahl, G., and T. Griffin. "Top Farms and the Effect of Investing in Machinery" AgManager publication K-State University. 4.2.19
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. and T. Griffin. 2020. Machinery Cost Calculator. Application that calculates the cost per acre for owned machinery operations. 7/7/20. https://agmanager.info/machinery/kansas-days-suitable-fieldwork/machinery-cost- calculator
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G., K. Herbel, and A. Featherstone. 2020. "A Preliminary Estimate of 2019 Enterprise Profitability." AgManager publication, GI-2020.1 - February 7, 2020.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. "Crop Budget and Leasing Tool." Application that uses the crop budgets to calculate leasing returns. 12/10/20. https://agmanager.info/land-leasing/land-rental-rates/lease-simulation-tool
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. "General Overview of the crop budget and leasing tool." Instructional video. 12/10/20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mELvOyIDPUw&feature=youtu.be
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. "Comparing share vs cash leases. Instructional video. 12/10/20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii4EoZPVfRc&feature=youtu.be
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. "How to create a new budget from an existing budget." Instructional video. 12/10/20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc51uFOdjuI&feature=youtu.be
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. "How to simulate the expected returns from various lease arrangement." Instructional video. 12/10/20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCK-lnUKluY&feature=youtu.be
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. 2020. "How to interpret the simulation results from the lease alternatives." Instructional video. 12/10/20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZzIt0vI870&feature=youtu.be


Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20

Outputs
Target Audience:We were able to reach farmers, lenders, Extension specialists, students, and others interested in agriculture and budgets by posting informantion on AgManager.info. The AgManager.info site is one of the leading sources of agricultural information across the country. While AgManager may not be quite as well know as FarmDoc, the AgManager site does have a broad reach and most people connected with agriculture have used the site. Changes/Problems:Covid limited our opportunites to develop specific organic budgets. However, the tool is capable of doing that and we plan on adding more budgets as the tool is refined. As long as a producer knows the operations needed to grow an organic crop, our tool can produce a cost estimate. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We are currently working with Extension specialists and faculty in Agronomy to provide training on the budgeting tools and the machinery cost calculator. We have developed a series of five videos to help users understand how the tool works. We are working to include training at the K-State annnual conferrence where all the county agents come together. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We currently have the budget generator and the machinery cost tool availalble on AgManager.info. Along with the tool is the set of documentation. With Covid, we were limited at the opportunities to present our tools to others outside of the state. However, AgManager.info is a well know source of agricultural information so others in Extension have likely seen the tools. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have had limited opportunites to produce actual organic crop budgets but the pieces are in place for one to do that. We plan to produce a set of videos explaining how one could build an entirely new crop budget or how someone could take an existing budget and modify that to produce their own specialized crop budget

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We have finished the basic organic crop budgeting tool. The tool is much broader than just producing organic crop budgets. We can also develop conventional crop budgets as well. Organic crop budgets are really just a constrained set of conventional crop budgets as many of the inputs allowed under conventional production are not allowed in organic procution. We have an option on the budgeting tool that filters the list of inputs so that only organic inputs are chosen. We are using this tool to produce all of the crop budgets for Kansas State Unviersity. The tool is named the Kansas State Budget Generator. The tool works as designed. There are two main areas: an input section that allows access to the backend database of input prices and a front-end section where users can choose the field operations and the inputs that go into a budget. The budget generator app takes the inputs chosen, and using the backend of database input prices, produces a budget with the appropriate costs. We have made the tool available on the K-State AgManager.info site. The current available version has the input section turned off as we didn't want users to initially make changes to the underlying databases. This option will be made available to all users for the 2021 release. We have also developed a spinoff product that focues on just the machinery componet of crop budgets. Given that many organic budgets trade chemical weed control for mechanical weed control, this stand alone tool should be very useful. For this machinery cost tool, producers select the implement and the implement size they will use in the field. The tool matches a tractor to that implement and then produces the cost per acre to operate that particular implement and tractor. The tool provides a detailed cost breakdown of fixed and variable costs. This tool is more polished than the budget generator tool as it was really the first part of the budget generator developed. This tool allows users acccess to the backend databases that drive the cost calculation process.

Publications

  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G. and T. Griffin. 2020. Machinery Cost Calculator. Application that calculates the cost per acre for owned machinery operations. 7/7/20. https://agmanager.info/machinery/kansas-days-suitable-fieldwork/machinery-cost-calculator
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ibendahl, G., K. Herbel, and A. Featherstone. 2020. "A Preliminary Estimate of 2019 Enterprise Profitability." AgManager publication, GI-2020.1 - February 7, 2020.


Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19

Outputs
Target Audience:Most of this year was spent in coding the budget generation tool. I reached out to fellow agricultural economics faculty, grad students, and other Extension personnel with roles in crop budgeting to get their ideas for how various sections of the tool should work. I also ran ideas by farmers to see what their opinions were. Changes/Problems:Everything is proceeding as planned but the programming of the crop budgeting tool has taken much longer than expected. The linking of tables and the coding required was much more difficult than expected. Filemaker is a fairly easy to use programming environment but there are many tables needed and all the tables have to communicate with each other. Then coding is needed to take the connected tables and generate an actual budget.Thus, much of the past year was just spent on coding. We ask and received the year extension so we still should be able to finish on time What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Because the crop budgeting tool can do both organic and conventional crop budgets, we have been using this tool in the background to generate the Kansas State Crop budgets. At this point, we haven't yet let producers or Extension agents try the tool but the tool has been instrumental in developing the Excel crop budgets we do have. Basically, the output from the crop budgeting tool is being copied into an Excel spreadsheet. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Finishing the budgeting tool is most imporant and should be finished in the next couple of months. After that we will start on the process of providing crop budgets for organic producers. We will also likely develop companion conventional crop budgets so that producers can make comparisons.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? By far the most time this past year was spent onsoftware development of the organic crop budgeting tool. The tool is being developed using the database program Filemaker. The initial prototype tool had to be completely rewritten from scratch due to instabilities in the prototype. The tool is nearly complete now. There are sections to input the crop grown, the inputs used, and the machinery trips required. The machinery section itself now allows for either custom hiring machinery or an operator owing their own machinery. The tool can also be used to develop budgets for conventional crops so that producers looking to move to organic can make profitability comparisons between organic and conventional production. The tool now has several organic switches so that only those inputs allowed on organic production can be shown when choosing inputs. The tool now has all the major sections in place and is calculating numbers correctly. The last stage is to tie all the information together into a budget report for the producer. Thus, a month or two remains on the actual programming. The first two objectives are being developed in concert with the development of the crop budgeting tool. We have a wide range of machinery inputs in the tool now and other inputs are being added as we go. The last major step is to actually put together the organic crop budgets. This will happen after all the other parts are ready.

Publications

  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ibendahl, G. "USDA Expense Indexes" AgManager publication K-State University. 2.14.19
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ibendahl, G. and T. Griffin. "What Makes a Top Farm." Selected paper at the 2019 NFBM Conference. June 9-13, 2019 Sheboygan, WI.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ibendahl, G., and T. Griffin. "Top Farms and the Effect of Debt" AgManager publication K-State University. 3.25.19
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ibendahl, G., and T. Griffin. "Top Farms and the Effect of Investing in Machinery" AgManager publication K-State University. 4.2.19


Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/18

Outputs
Target Audience:We have presented preliminary results of our work at several academic conferences including the SAEA (Southern Agricultural Economics Association) meetingsand the WAEA (Western Agricultural Economics Association) meetings. In addition we have presented at the Kansas State Risk and Profit conference which is a two day conference for farmers, lenders, and others working in agriculture. This conference typically has 150 people attend Changes/Problems:Because the fully developed budget generator tool is the most complicated part of the project, it might be better to use one of the on-line database tools. This shouldn't change what we plan to deliver. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The graduate student working on this project attended an organic workshop "Transitioning to Organic -Challenges in the Field and Marketplace" that was held in St. Louis in November 2017. The PI attended a oneday workshop for organic producers in Northeast Kansas. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Most of the presented results from the work being conducted have involved presentations about transitioning to organic and examining the characteristics of top performing producers. These have been descriped in the presentation section. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to gather inputs prices and practices for organic crop production. In addtion, we will continue to work on the budget generator tool.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The profitability of agriculture and specifically the profitability to farmers has always been a concern during most years. The last couple of years especially have been difficult for farmers as grain prices have dropped to low levels. Thus farmers have been searching for ways to become more profitable. Organic production has that potential as organic grain prices are higher than conventional grain prices. Unfortunately for farmers, there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to organic grain production. Farmers may have some idea of potential organic grain prices but there is less information available about potential yields, the cost of organic inputs, and the prices of these inputs. Thus convincing farmers that organic production is wothwhile can be difficult without making some estimation of the potential profitability. Compounding all this is the requirement that organic produciton requires a transition period before it can be sold as organic. That is, organic practices must be followed for a few years while the crop is still sold as a regular non-organic crop. These transition years can actually produce less profit than just growing a regular non-organic crop. The reseach from this project is attempting to clarify what farmers might make from organic crop production. The budget generator tool that is in development will help farms plan what they could make from an acre of organic crop production vs what they would make from an acre of conventional non-organic crops. In addition, we are examining the transition periods need to become an organic farm to see how this affects multi-year profitability and to determine what organic crop prices need to be in order to make an organic transition be profitable. Finally we are examing characteristics of the most profitable non-organic farms to see how these could affect the transition to organic production. As these areas of uncertainty are clarified, farmers will be more likely to make a switch to organic production and this should increase the number of organic crop areas while also helping to boost farmer profitability. We are currently in the research phase of all the objectives. We have identified the major crops and are starting to develop a list of inputs that are used to grow these crops. The graduate student working on this project has been working on a survey that will be used to help clarify these inputs. In addition, we are reseaching other organic budgets that are currently available to check these for inputs and production practices. We have visited with organic crop producers to see what inputs they are using and their specific production practices. These conversations with organic producers are also helping us clarify the transition period from conventional production to organic production. The organic crop budget tool that is being developed has a database for inputs and another for production practices. We will seed the budget generator with a list of produciton practices that can be used to grow the major organic crops. The database of inputs and costs can be applied to both the default production practices as well as any production practices the farmer chooses.The major function of the budget generator is that farmers can modify the list of production practices to fit their specific farm. For example, a farmer most likely will develop a budget for their specific farm that uses the equipment they currently have in place. We are currently developing the budget generator tool in FileMaker. This is the most difficult part as there are many moving parts to this tool. In other words, there are many tables that have to be tied together in a relational database. However, we may move the budget generator tool to one of the on-line database tool such as Coda or Airtable. These on-line databases have the advantage of being easier to distribute and develop but the end product may not look quite as pretty as something developed in FileMaker.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Carls, E., G. Ibendahl, T. Griffin, and E. Yeager. "Factors Affecting Net Farm Income". 2018 Risk and Profit Conference presentation, Manhattan Kansas. August 2018.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Carls, E., T. Griffin, and G. Ibendahl. "Farm Management Implications of Transitioning from Conventional to Organic Production: An Application of Whole-farm Linear Programming Model to Examine Transition Period." 2018 Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Jacksonville, FL. February 3-6, 2018.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Carls, E., T. Griffin, G. Ibendahl, and E. Yeager. "Transitioning from Conventional to Organic Production." 2018 Western Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anchorage, AK. June 24-26, 2018.


Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The final target audience is to reach Extension agents and organic producers themselves with a decision making tool that will help organic producers develop a crop budget. During this first year, our major priority was to identify all the major organic crops in each state. Because of the nature of this work, we were in the data collection phase and did not produce any deliverables. We did interact with organic growers in Kansas to determine their crops and what they are interested in. The graduate student working on this project also used a test farm in Illinois to identify some of the issues with converting to organic Changes/Problems:We have increased the detail from the 9 ERS regions to the state level. We eventually wanted to get to the state level anyway and as there was data available about organic crop production at the state level, we decided to minimize the ERS region approach. The ERS regions don't seem to be used much from our analysis. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We should have the survey of organic production practices and inputs completed during this next year. We will also start work on identifying the cost of each of the inputs. Both of these databases will be key elements of the organic crop budgeting tool. We will continue work on the budgeting tool as well during this next period

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We have worked on identifying the major organic crops in each region. We actually now have all the organic crops for each state. In the database we have developed, we have the biggest organic crops by both volume and also by value. We will use this list of major organic crops to develop the survey to producers and Extension educators to find out more about the production practices and inputs. We are currently developing an on-line survey instrument that will ask these producers and Extension educators about what inputs they are using, how much of the input, and what other production practices they are following. Basically, this survey will ask for what happens each time they do something with a field of a particular organic crop. The database of organic crops will be used to guide th is survey. We have also starting working on the organic crop budgeting tool.

Publications