Field experiments were conducted to determine the influence of winter wheat seeding date and forage removal on the efficacy of cheat control herbicides, forage and grain yields, and net returns to land, overhead, risk, and management for the various cheat control strategies. Economic analysis showed that net returns were higher when wheat was seeded during the traditional seeding period (October) than when either seeded early (September) for increased forage production or delayed (November) for cultural cheat control. Some herbicides were economically beneficial at two of three locations where the initial cheat population exceeded 170 plants/m2.

The enterprise budget, whole farm cash flow, and income statement are fundamental tools of farm and ranch management. The “Microcomputer Budget Management System” (MBMS) is a microcomputer software package that facilitates the storage and use of information for crop and livestock budgeting. It performs the calculations for several1 enterprise budgeting formats and for preparation of whole farm resource use reports and financial statements. The MBMS also includes internal machinery and irrigation cost calculation routines.

MBMS was developed for use by extension staff, researchers, lenders, consultants, and operators of diversified farms and ranches with many enterprises that use enterprise and whole farm budgeting for analysis and planning activities. The flexibility and detailed nature of the program requires the user to have knowledge of enterprise budgeting and operation of complex computer programs. This paper presents a discussion of the features and capabilities of the software and the computational procedures used in the cost calculations.

Information about the costs and labor requirements of experimental organic farming systems designed to restore highly degraded soils in the southeastern US are needed. Enterprise budgets were prepared for the production of okra, hot pepper and a corn/winter squash intercrop under 10 different production systems, nine of which were based on organic conservation tillage. A stochastic dominance analysis was conducted to determine the relative risk efficiency of the 10 systems over the course of the experiment in terms of productivity, profitability and carbon sequestration potential. Organic conservation tillage treatments had lower tractor labor and fuel costs than conventional treatments, due to the extensive tillage required in conventional vegetable farming. The subset of organic treatments receiving compost addition without additional mulches also demonstrated increases in soil carbon, an important driver of system productivity. Organic treatments had little pest and pathogen pressure, with the exception of Fusarium wilt in some treatments receiving straw mulch. Weed suppression by straw mulches reduced labor requirements by an average of 23%. Yields in all treatments were lower than conventional yields from other studies in the region, due to the degraded nature of the soil on the study site. However, net returns on high-labor, organic crops were over US$30,000 ha−1 in some treatments. The results of this work indicate that organic, conservation tillage systems can restore soil productivity and command high returns per hectare if labor requirements can be met.