Custom Rate Survey Provides Farmers Baseline Costs

Greg Halich, farm management specialist with the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, has compiled a baseline guide for custom machinery rates in Kentucky. Halich gathered information from Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa and Kansas. The rates he has calculated are averages for these combined states and are adjusted for differences in fuel price, machinery costs and wages at the time of the reported surveys.

Adjusted data is available on 64 grain crop operation tasks, 44 hay operations, 34 miscellaneous operations and 72 unadjusted rates for miscellaneous operations.

"The stimuli for doing this came both from county extension agents and from farmers who where looking for custom rates for Kentucky,” he said. “So the need was there, but there was no time to do it (a state survey) before spring planting. There were a lot of other surveys that were applicable to Kentucky conditions, so why not utilize them in some fashion? So, I came up with the idea of averaging the other surveys and modifying them for differences.”

Click here for more info on the project.

Click here to download the full survey report.