Plan your cost of cultivation before the season starts - enter your expected cost per acre for each category and get the total cost for your land.
Cost Categories (₹ per acre)
How to Use the Crop Cost Calculator
Enter your "Land Area (acres)".
Fill in each cost category with the expected cost per acre (Seeds, Fertilizer, Labor, etc.).
Use "Add Cost Category" to add more rows, or the × button to remove one.
Click "Calculate Total Cost" to see your per-acre cost and total cost for your land.
How the Total Is Calculated
The calculator adds up every row you fill in to get a single cost per acre, then multiplies it by your land area: Total Cost = (Seeds + Fertilizer + Pesticides + Labour + Irrigation + Machinery + any extra rows) × Acres. Rows left at zero are simply ignored, and you can rename or add rows for items such as land lease or transport.
Because every figure is per acre, the land area must also be in acres. If your plot is recorded in bigha, guntha, kanal or cent, convert it first with the Land Area or Bigha to Acre calculators. Entering 4 when the field is 4 bigha will give the wrong total.
Worked Example
Suppose a farmer budgets for 3.5 acres using the per-acre figures below. These numbers are only for illustration; costs differ a lot between crops, districts and seasons.
Cost item
₹ per acre
₹ for 3.5 acres
Seeds
1,500
5,250
Fertilizer
4,000
14,000
Pesticides
2,000
7,000
Labour
8,000
28,000
Irrigation
2,500
8,750
Machinery / fuel
4,500
15,750
Total
22,500
78,750
The calculator would show a cost per acre of ₹22500.00 and a total of ₹78750.00. Labour is the largest single item here, which is common for crops that need hand weeding, transplanting or manual harvesting.
Costs That Are Easy to Forget
Land lease rent, if you cultivate rented or sharecropped land. Convert the yearly or seasonal rent into a per-acre figure and add it as its own row.
Interest on a crop loan or Kisan Credit Card withdrawal for the months the money is borrowed.
Hired machine charges for ploughing, sowing, spraying or combine harvesting, which are separate from diesel for your own tractor.
Transport to the mandi, loading and unloading, commission and market fees, and gunny bags or other packing.
Electricity or diesel for pumps, canal water charges, and repairs to pipes, drip lines or sprayers.
Crop insurance premium, soil testing, and manure or compost bought from outside the farm.
Paid-Out Cost Versus Full Cost
The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which advises the Government of India on Minimum Support Prices, uses layered cost definitions. A2 covers cash and kind expenses actually paid out, such as seed, fertilizer, hired labour, machinery hire and leased-in land rent. A2+FL adds the imputed value of unpaid family labour. C2 goes further and includes the rental value of owned land and interest on owned capital.
If you enter only the bills you pay, your result is close to an A2 figure. Adding a row for the days you and your family work, valued at the local daily wage, brings it closer to A2+FL. Comparing that figure with the expected selling price or MSP shows whether the crop really pays for your own time.
Tips for a Realistic Budget
Base each row on last season's receipts where possible, then adjust for any known price change in seed, fertilizer or diesel.
Avoid counting the same expense twice, for example tractor diesel under both Labour and Machinery/Fuel.
Keep a margin of 10 to 15 percent for pest outbreaks, re-sowing after poor germination or an extra irrigation in a dry spell.
After harvest, enter your actual spending and income in the Farming Profit Calculator to see how close the budget was.
Frequently Asked Questions
Per-acre costs are easier to plan with, since they come from known rates (like seed cost per acre or labor days per acre) and scale automatically to any land size - useful if you're comparing costs across fields of different sizes.
This Crop Cost Calculator is a planning tool for before the season - working out your budget from expected per-acre costs. The Farming Profit Calculator is for after harvest - comparing your actual total revenue against your actual total costs to see real profit or loss.
Yes - run the calculator once per crop with that crop's expected per-acre costs to compare total cultivation costs before deciding what to plant.
For a cash budget, you can leave it out because no money changes hands. To judge whether a crop is truly worth growing, add a row for family labour days multiplied by the local daily wage. A crop that only looks profitable when your own work is counted as free may not be the best use of your time.
Convert it to acres first, because the calculator multiplies per-acre costs by acres. A bigha ranges from about 9,070 sq ft in Punjab to 27,225 sq ft for the pucca bigha of Uttar Pradesh, so use the Bigha to Acre calculator with your state selected. Your per-acre cost figures must also be per acre, not per bigha.