Machinery Cost of Operations Estimates
Machinery Cost Estimates Summary
Field Operations
Harvest Operations
Forage Operations
Machinery Economics
Analyzes the cost of completing fieldwork and generates machinery costs.
Illinois Crop Budgets and Historic Returns
2025 Budgets For All Regions
This publication presents crop budgets for three regions in Illinois: northern, central, and southern Illinois. Central Illinois is further divided…
Revenue and Costs for Illinois Grain Crops
Shows historical cost for the last 5 years and projections for next year. Table gives results for corn, soybeans, wheat,…
Costs to Produce Corn and Soybeans in Illinois—2024
The total of all economic costs per acre for growing corn and soybeans in Illinois.
2024 Budgets For All Regions
This publication presents crop budgets for three regions in Illinois: northern, central, and southern Illinois. Central Illinois is further divided…
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Farm Projection Tool
This program calculates per-acre budgets for different crops and a whole farm budget and includes breakevens. Projected financial statements and…
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Revisions to 2025 Illinois crop budgets are provided along with updates to return estimates for the 2024 crop year. The projected corn price for 2025 is lowered from $4.30 to $4.20 while the soybean price is increased $0.05 per bushel to $10.25. Estimates for 2024 and projections for 2025 continue to show negative returns to corn and soybean production across all regions of Illinois for cash rented farmland.
Illinois crop budgets for 2025 have been revised from their initial release in September. Based on recent futures market activity, the 2025 corn price has been increased to $4.30 per bushel while the soybean price has been reduced to $10.20. This marginally improves projected corn returns, while projected soybean returns have declined slightly. Return projections remain negative for corn and soybeans across all regions of Illinois for 2025.
In 2023, the total noncapital living expenses of 1,345 farm families enrolled in Illinois Farm Business Farm Management averaged $97,100–or about $8,000 a month for each family. This average was about 6% higher than in 2022. Another $8,762 was used to buy capital items such as the personal share of the family automobile, furniture, and household equipment. Thus, the grand total for living expenses averaged $105,862 for 2023 compared with $98,833 for 2022, or a $7,029 increase per family.
Illinois crop budgets for 2025 are now available and, overall, projections are for lower production costs for corn and soybeans in 2025 compared with 2024. Break-even prices to cover all costs, including cash rent for farmland, range from $4.60 to $4.66 per bushel for corn and $11.01 to $11.56 per bushel for soybeans. Despite lower cost projections, current expectations for corn and soybean prices suggest negative farmer returns to corn and soybeans across all regions of Illinois in 2025.
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Historic Crop Budgets
2023 Budgets For All Regions
This publication presents crop budgets for three regions in Illinois: northern, central, and southern Illinois. Central Illinois is further divided…
2022 Budgets For All Regions
This publication presents crop budgets for three regions in Illinois: northern, central, and southern Illinois. Central Illinois is further divided…
2020 Cost to Produce Corn and Soybeans in Illinois
2021 Budgets For All Regions
This publication presents crop budgets for three regions in Illinois: northern, central, and southern Illinois. Central Illinois is further divided…
2020 Budgets For All Regions
This publication presents crop budgets for three regions in Illinois: northern, central, and southern Illinois. Central Illinois is further divided…
2019 Budgets For All Regions
2013 – 2016 Budgets For All Regions
2018 Budgets For All Regions
2017 Budgets For All Regions
2016 Budgets For All Regions
Illinois Rental Fact Sheets
Variable Cash Rent Leasing Fact Sheet
Index Numbers of Illinois Farmland Values
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Farm Projection Tool
This program calculates per-acre budgets for different crops and a whole farm budget and includes breakevens. Projected financial statements and…
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Over time, more farmland leases in Illinois have been shifting from traditional crop share leases to cash leases. In addition, there has been some increase in flexible or variable rent…
Lower returns to rented land and higher interest rates began to signal the potential for downward pressure on farmland values in 2023. Those signals continue, with current fundamentals suggesting land value reductions of around 3% in 2025. A 3% decline would be in line with observed adjustments since the 1980s as well as expectations from professional farm managers surveyed in 2024. On the other hand, valid arguments exist for continued strength in farmland values.
The variable cash lease has been gaining traction in recent years as farmer tenants seek more risk-sharing without the managerial headaches that can come with traditional share leases. Relative to a fixed cash rent situation the variable cash lease is projected to result in better farmer returns when revenues decline. However, the economic situation facing producers since 2023 highlights the risk-sharing gap that remains if variable lease designs adjust only to changes in crop revenues.
We have again reached the point where cash renting farmland has negative returns. History would suggest that reductions in cash rents gradually occur with small adjustments over multiple years. Furthermore, downward adjustments in cash rents historically do not fully reflect downturns in farm returns. That situation likely will continue until a larger share of farm operations are forced to reduce cash rents because of the erosion of their financial positions.
Significant declines in 2025 cash rents are expected and may be necessary given negative expected returns for 2024, and a continued low return outlook for 2025. As a benchmark, reducing cash rents back to 2020 levels would help, particularly for cash rents that are at or above NASS averages. Rents at 2020 levels still would have resulted in negative returns for 2024 in most cases.
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Finance
Financial Characteritics of Illinois Farms
Credit Reports and Consumer Credit Scoring
Whole Farm and Other Reports
Summary of Illinois Farm Business Records
Farm Income and Production Cost Summary
Farm and Family Living Income and Expenses
Cost to Produce Beef in Illinois
Cost to Produce Milk in Illinois
Commodity Title Alternatives
January 11, 2022
Farmers will again have until March 15 to make commodity title program selections. Given the current high prices, commodity title payments are not expected from any program option...
December 12, 2018
On Monday December 10, 2018, the House and Senate conference committee released the conference report for the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018...
September 24, 2019
Farmers and landowners can now decide whether to receive commodity title payments from either Agricultural Risk Coverage at the county...
September 17, 2019
Farmers and landowners can now make the decision between farm programs, receiving commodity title payments...
November 5, 2019
The 2018 Farm Bill What-If Tool has been released (click here to download). This Microsoft Excel spreadsheet will estimate Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage at the county level...
October 29, 2019
ARC-IC (Agriculture Risk Coverage – Individual) has received less attention than ARC-CO (ARC – County) and PLC (Price Loss Coverage). ARC-IC is operationally more complex...
January 7, 2020
Agricultural Risk Coverage at the Individual Level (ARC-IC) should be considered as a commodity title alternative for 2019 and 2020 in two special cases...
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The Gardner Payment Calculator provides estimates of expected payments and likelihood of payments for ARC-CO and PLC. Payment estimates are provided for the program years from 2019 to 2023. Users can select the state, county, and crop combination that they wish to consider.
If you are having trouble registering please view the faq or watch the video below.
This program calculates Agricultural Risk Coverage for County Coverage (ARC-CO), Price Loss Coverage (PLC) payments, and ARC at the Individual Level (ARC-IC). County yields and market year average (MYA) prices are brought in for a user-specified state-county-crop combination. Users then can change 2018 through 2020 county yields and prices to see ARC-CO and PLC payments under those yields and prices.
As an alternative to the executable tool you can download the spreadsheet here.
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The Farm Bill in Reconciliation: Loophole as Rosetta Stone; Review and Comment
As of July 4, 2025, budget reconciliation, bearing the title “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” is Public Law. Among its many provisions are revisions to the major mandatory programs of the Farm Bill, reauthorizing them through 2031. Rushed through Congress under special budget procedures and a dearth of deliberation, much about this new federal law remains confusing and dismaying. This article reviews an expanded loophole for farm program payment limitations as a potential Rosetta Stone.
Impacts of the Commodity Title Changes Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) for Midwestern Farms in 2025
This farmdoc daily article discusses the changes made to the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) programs in the commodity provisions of the budget reconciliation legislation known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). For the 2025 crop year, the new commodity title provisions are expected to increase payments by significant amounts. Those payments, however, will not be received until October 2026.
Reconciliation Bill Proposals to Add Base Acres
The Reconciliation Bills moving through Congress include proposals that would increase the number of base acres eligible for farm program payments. For farms that planted acreage to eligible crops from…
Dramatic Difference in Expected Yields between Corn, Soybeans, and Cotton for Area-Based Insurance Products
Both the House and Senate Reconciliation Bills include provisions to encourage the purchase of the Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO). Since 2015 when SCO was first offered, actual county-level yields of corn and soybeans in the Midwest have been above expected yields in most years, implying a continuation of historical increases in yield and lower expectations for indemnities. On the other hand, actual county-level yields have been below expected yields for the majority of years for cotton.
The House Reconciliation Bill Proposal for SCO: Income Support for High-Risk Farmland
The House Reconciliation Bill includes provisions to modify the Supplemental Coverage Option, a crop insurance product providing county coverage above Revenue Protection and other farm-level products. This article examines what the payments would have been from 2015 to 2023 under the proposed structure and finds that the proposed SCO product would have limited benefits to corn and soybean production in many Midwest states. More benefits, however, would have flowed to riskier production regions.
Impacts of Premium Support Increase of Basic and Optional Units in House Reconciliation Bill
The House Reconciliation Bill includes provisions that would increase premium support rates on basic and optional units. Given that farmers do not change their policies, units, or coverage levels, we…
Spending Impacts of PLC and ARC-CO in House Agriculture Reconciliation Bill
The House Reconciliation Bill includes changes to statutory reference prices used to trigger payments from the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program, as well as changes to Agricultural Risk Coverage (see…
Reviewing the House Agriculture Committee’s Reconciliation Bill
Budget reconciliation has begun in the House of Representatives, with multiple committees releasing text and holding business meetings to mark-up the legislation. As part of that process the House Agriculture…
Additional Thoughts on 2025 Crop Insurance and Farm Program Decisions
The deadline to finalize 2025 crop insurance decisions is now less than a week away (March 17th). The harvest futures contracts for corn (December) and soybeans (November) have moved below…
The Arithmetic of Commodity Title Programs
Increasing per-acre corn payments for commodity title programs will have a much more significant effect on total Federal outlays than other crops because corn has many more base acres. Seed cotton, rice, and peanuts have lower base acres; hence, spending increases tend to have much less impact on total Federal outlays. As a result, seed cotton, rice, and peanuts often have larger per-acre increases in spending than does corn. This process is illustrated with the House Proposal for the Farm Bill.
Potential Federal Policy Responses to Negative Grain Farm Incomes
In 2024, grain farm incomes will be low and, in many cases, negative. In recent weeks, hurricanes Helene and Milton have also caused extensive damage to many farmers caught in their paths. Congress remains in recess through election day, Nov. 5, 2024, but the push for federal relief is growing. Federal policy responses in the lame duck are likely and include: 1) extending the current or passing a new farm bill and 2) passing an ad hoc, supplemental, or emergency disaster assistance package.
2024 Low Returns, Prices, and the Federal Safety Net
A steep decline in prices across years has resulted in low to negative average returns to Midwest farms in 2023 and projected for 2024. Crop insurance programs are not designed to cover the risk of multi-year price declines and current commodity title programs are also expected to provide little relief for these low prices. Modifying commodity title programs to make them more market-responsive would aid in providing relief to farmers.