U.S. and regional cost and return
data
Fuel consumption estimates
USDA crop cost and return estimates for fuel items are computed
by pricing estimates of fuel consumption by state-average fuel prices.
Estimates of State-average fuel consumption from the most recent
surveys of crop producers (since 1997) are presented here:
Energy use on major field crops in surveyed
States
Fuel consumption is calculated for machinery operations, including
tractor and truck use, irrigation, and drying, when applicable.
Fuel consumption is estimated by combining engineering coefficients
describing fuel use per hour with data on engine horsepower, fuel
type, and hours of machine use collected in the Agricultural Resource
Management Survey (ARMS). Equations used to compute fuel consumption
can be found in the Commodity
Costs and Returns Estimation Handbook published by the American
Agricultural Economics Association Task Force on Commodity Costs
and Returns.
Monthly milk costs of production
Methods of estimating the monthly
milk costs of production (COP) in each State use the most recent
annual estimate as the baseline, along with indexes that reflect
price and production differences between months and the baseline.
Since their initial release on June 1, 2003, two revisions have
been made to the methods for developing the monthly milk cost of
production estimates. The index used to reflect monthly variation
in milk production due to seasonal changes has been converted to
a daily basis (i.e., milk production per cow per day in each month)
to account for differences in the number of days in each month.
Also, this index has been dropped from the formula for monthly milk
marketing cost because changes in production each month are not
likely to affect the unit cost of marketing milk.
ERS produces a range of data products available in different formats,
including online databases, spreadsheets, and web files. All data
products online are available at no charge.
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