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Virginia Cooperative Extension -
 Knowledge for the CommonWealth

2008 Farm Custom-Work Rate Guide for the Shenandoah Valley

Farm Business Management Update, April 2008 - May 2008

Bill Whittle (wwhittle@vt.edu) and Tom Stanley (stanleyt@vt.edu), Extension Agents, Farm Business Management, Northwest District

In late 2007, the Farm Business Management Agents in the Northwest Extension District, cooperating with other Extension Agents, surveyed farmers and custom operators familiar with machinery custom-work rates in their localities. The survey instrument was prepared by the Farm Business Management Agents and mailed to farmers by participating Extension Agents in eleven counties. The Farm Business Management Agents tabulated 219 usable surveys, representing 1347 quotes, and developed the biannual Guide that is distributed to the local Extension offices.

The table reports the job, the unit for which the charge is quoted (acre, hour, bale, etc.), the number of usable responses for each job and the average for all the quotes followed by the low and high reported quote for each job. The last column states the Shenandoah Valley average. Some quotes received were not included since they were too extreme; however, there is still a wide range of quotes for many of the reported jobs. For many jobs the quotes were "bunched" close to the reported average which gives credibility to a majority of the averages, especially where there are a large number of responses for a particular job.



 

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