Computer screen with survey

2024 Cost of Production Survey

January 9, 2025 | Kriss Nelson

Input costs are critical to farmers, significantly impacting their profit margins and ability to stay afloat. Managing input costs effectively is essential for a farmer’s financial sustainability.

To further assist Iowa soybean farmers with their management decisions, the Iowa Soybean Association’s (ISA) Research Center for Farming Innovation is collecting individual input costs from participating farmers to improve return on investment calculations for the products they research with Iowa farmers.

ISA’s 2024 Cost of Product Survey can be accessed here.

“While we often compare product A and product B, we haven’t always been able to show if either is cost-effective,” says Matt Carroll, ISA analytics and insights lead. “The intent of the survey is to get a good idea what inputs are costing farmers so we will not only able to give recommendations on agronomic performance, but have an accurate estimate of even if a product does work if it will pay for itself.”

The farmers need to choose two fields from the 2024 growing season, one for corn and the other for soybeans. Only specific costs are required, such as seeds, chemicals, biologicals, adjuvants, surfactants, fertilizers, and outsourced applications. No land, labor, or equipment depreciation costs are being requested.

Once farmers gather information for their two chosen fields, Carroll estimates the survey should only take 15 to 20 minutes. Entries are anonymous.

If farmers participate by January 15, they will have the chance to win a $100 or $50 gift card in a drawing.

“If we receive a satisfactory response, we are planning to summarize price and input costs by cropping district, which will help us define our research better helping farmers to put together accurate crop budgets and give them a better idea of how much variability there is and give them some information when making input purchasing decisions,” says Carroll.

For more information, contact Carroll at mcarroll@iasoybeans.com or call 815-858-4335.

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