The biggest expense on just about any diversified produce farm is labor. It is also the hardest to track. This 17-minute video presentation provides practical approaches to record keeping about labor that will help you understand the labor component of the cost of production for different crops.
Presenter: John Hendrickson, University of Wisconsin's Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems.
Scroll down to find links to the additional resources John shares at the end of the session.
Additional Resources
- Video tutorial on creating a Google Doc form for tracking labor by vegetable crop.
- Veggie Compass - Veggie Compass is a free spreadsheet tool to track and understand cost of production and profitability by crop and market channel, including labor costs.
- Veggie Compass spreadsheet to estimate labor costs by crop.
- Know Your Cost to Grow - Program run by Tanya Murray at Oregon Tilth that helps you understand your costs of production and includes a thoughtful, detailed system for doing time-tracking studies.
- Carolina Farm Stewardship Software and Record Keeping Software and Templates. These tools are designed for hoop house cost tracking, including labor inputs.