In this 12-minute screen cast, Steve Hadcock will discuss how partial budgeting could be used to help decide whether the investment in additional equipment is financially feasible.
The Situation
A market garden vegetable farm that grows a wide variety of vegetable crops is considering changes to its irrigation system. For many years, the farm has used a reel/hose system. They suspect that they may be “leaving money on the table” by not getting as much of the marketable yield from their vegetable crops they possibly could. This farm is looking into switching to trickle irrigation.
To help determine the financial feasibility of this proposed change, they have chosen one of their most valuable crops for the partial budget exercise — tomatoes.
A variety of components need to be purchased to make switching to trickle irrigation system work. There are various irrigation components that need to be purchased. A new plastic mulch layer is required too, in order to place drip tape underneath the plastic mulch. Click on the play button below or watch the video on YouTube.
Resources
Here are some resources that Steve found useful in developing this example. We hope they are useful to you, too.
- Yield Expectations for Mixed Stand Small-Scale Agriculture – Rutgers University
- Efficiency of Drip and Overhead Irrigation Systems – Washington State University
- Drip Irrigation for Vegetable Production – Pennsylvania State University
- Cost Analysis of Various Irrigation Systems – University of Maine
- Irrigation Cost Calculator
- Enterprise Budgets
- Small Scale Commercial Tomato Budget – University of Kentucky
- Enterprise Budgets – Pennsylvania State University
- Vegetable Budgets – University of Massachusetts
- There are several online resources to estimate the current market value of farm machinery. Here is some to choose from: