What do you pay for custom work?

Many Ohio farmers hire custom farm work in their farm business or perform custom farm work for others.
Custom farming rates traditionally have been arrived at by a series of calculations and negotiations. One of the most common ways custom farming providers and consumers arrive at an agreeable custom farming rate is to access University Extension summarized surveys.
Ohio State University Extension and the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics have historically published farm custom rates to assist farm businesses with this important task.
New updates. Ohio Farm Custom Rates 2006 is the first Ohio custom rate survey update since 2002 and is available at your local Ohio State University Extension Office or online at: http://ohioline.osu.edu/ae-fact/pdf/0011.pdf.
Ohio Farm Custom Rates 2006 is based on survey results from 277 Ohio farmers, custom farmers and farm managers. The custom rates presented may differ from rates in your region depending on availability of custom operators and machinery, timeliness, operator skill, field size and shape, crop conditions, performance characteristics of the machine being used and demand for custom farming services.
What’s headed up. Custom farming rate increases for 2006 include custom corn harvest at $24/acre, conventional corn planting at $14.30/acre and drilling soybeans at $14.20/acre.
These represent increases of 14 percent, 19 percent and 9 percent, respectively over 2002 Ohio custom rates. Other operations show similar four-year rate increases.
Higher machinery, fuel and labor costs have contributed to custom farming rate increases over the past four years.
For more information on custom farming rates and other farm management topics see our department farm management Web site at: http://aede.osu.edu/programs/FarmManagement/.
The adjacent table is a sample of rates in the updated fact sheet. The “average” rate listed is the average of all responses. The range is the average +/- one standard deviation which includes about two-thirds of all responses.
(The author is the leader of production business management in the Ohio State University Extension’s department of agricultural, environmental and development economics.)