Veggie compass: A spreadsheet-based tool to calculate cost of production for diversified organic vegetable farmers

Abstract

Organic sales continue to increase in the United States, particularly in the category of fruits and vegetables. Many organic vegetable producers are highly diversified in both crop production and marketing strategies, selling many different crops through several different market channels. With this level of operational complexity, determination of cost of production and calculation of breakeven prices for each crop in each market channels is extremely challenging. A spreadsheet-based tool called Veggie Compass was created to assist growers in tracking their operational costs and determining crop-specific and market-specific costs of production, breakeven prices, and gross profits. The spreadsheet uses farm-specific data regarding expenses, sales, and labor inputs in its calculations. A farmer can define the crops grown and markets sold to tailor the information specifically for their operations. Continued development in collaboration with farmers will improve the programand allow growers to performanalyses that enable them to set prices that more accurately reflect their respective operational costs.