ABSTRACT
Budgets of cost and return estimates are developed for a variety of different purposes. Consequently, no single budget format or cost and return estimation procedure can be expected to be adequate, or even appropriate, for all purposes. The primary source of Economic Research Service cost and return data is their own survey of farmers, the Farm Cost and Returns Survey. Taxpayers might legitimately ask whether we should be basing government programs on cost and returns estimates that are different from the estimates being provided to the farmers who must respond to those policies. Agricultural economists should be preparing for significant changes in cost and return budgeting as we enter the 1990s. Many of the problems encountered in allocating machinery and overhead costs in the farm budgeting process, for example, result from trying to divide farming operations that are essentially wholes into collections of components.
