Connect on Social Media
Crop Insurance Decision Tool
This program calculates premiums, evaluates insurance payments, and provides historical data useful when making crop insurance decisions for multiple crops. Estimates are for crops in midwest and southeast states. Learn…
Farm Projection Tool
This program calculates per-acre budgets for different crops and a whole farm budget and includes breakevens. Projected financial statements and return sensitivities are available. The effects of farm level crop…
Planting Decision Model
With this program, the user can: 1) estimate the costs of planting corn and soybeans by planting date, 2) estimate the net returns from replanting, 3) prevented planting payments, and…
Recent Features
Visit farmdoc Sections
Crop Insurance Decision Tool
Farm Projection Tool
Index Numbers of Illinois Farmland Values
2019 Budgets For All Regions
Latest farmdoc Daily Articles
Updates from the Policy Design Lab: Crop Insurance and Soybeans
The Policy Design Lab project recently released two updates to the web-based policy visualizations. The first includes further developments for crop insurance, allowing users to visualize data at the county level and by year and/or by crop. The second is a storyboard for soybeans, visualizing background information on soybean trade and utilization. The Illinois Soybean Association helped support the development of the soybeans storyboard.
Foreign Ownership of U.S. Agricultural Land
Using US land in Farms as the reference, foreign ownership interests amount to 0.67% of the total, and the remaining 99.33% is US owned. Forestland accounts for 88.5% while cropland, pasture, and other agricultural land account for 11.5%. The countries with the largest ownership positions in U.S. agricultural land are Canada and several Western European nations with primary ownership in forestland. Canada is the largest at 2.28 million acres (38%).
Farmer Perceptions of AI Benefits in the United States and Argentina
Artificial intelligence and data-driven tools are being applied to agriculture, from robotics, automation, and precision farming to predictive analytics and digital advisory tools (Aijaz et al., 2025; Edet and Chowdhury,…
2025 Illinois Farm Earnings Improve but Remain Below Recent Averages
Based on records from 1,927 Illinois FBFM farms, average returns to farm operators’ labor and management increased in every region of Illinois in 2025 compared with 2024. However, returns remained below the five-year average. Although yields and costs were similar to the previous year, earnings improved because commodity prices exceeded beginning-of-year inventory values and farmers received Farmer Bridge Assistance payments. Higher livestock prices also increased returns for livestock farms.
Under Pressure: The Size and Timing of the Harvest Low in Corn Basis
US corn harvest-time corn basis bottoms in mid-October, coinciding with the peak of harvest activity. Average basis at the harvest-time low is about 11 cents below late-November levels. State-level lows average 16 cents, deepest in Missouri, Indiana and Illinois, and more loosely track local harvest progress. Avoiding sales at the harvest will realize gains on average over time, though futures moves and other costs may swamp basis gains.