By Elizabeth Thilmany
The University of Maryland Extension (UME) has launched the Maryland Grain Budget Planner, a new online tool designed to help farmers align production decisions with grain marketing strategies. This free resource—available at go.umd.edu/EFMD—combines enterprise budget data, market analysis, and benchmarking to support grain producers and advisors in financial planning and profitability assessments.
Thilmany, the project PI, remarks, “I continue to be impressed with the efforts and data collection that go into maintaining UME’s grain budgets. I wanted to explore how we could further promote sound financial recordkeeping and enterprise planning among Maryland producers, which led us to develop this website.”
The planner is part of UME’s more extensive grain marketing efforts (go.umd.edu/grainmarketing), which were recently updated to include the 2025 crop enterprise budgets, new custom rate estimates, and historical market trends.
Shannon Dill, UME Senior Agent and Co-PI on the project, explains, “This resource gives farmers more confidence in knowing their costs and understanding where marketing decisions align with profitability.”
The tool’s Market Analysis tab integrates historical grain pricing and estimated per-bushel income, while the Enterprise Budget section enables farmers to adjust production costs for their operations. For instance, the 2025 budgets reflect expected increases in soybean and hay production costs but decreases in corn and wheat costs. Meanwhile, new survey data show that custom rates are also rising, especially in areas like field preparation (projected to increase by 16%).
“We estimate that 66% of farmers consider rising input costs their greatest challenge,” Thilmany added, “Having current data at their fingertips allows producers to be more strategic when evaluating enterprise performance or marketing opportunities.”
The Maryland Grain Budget Planner and related tools are free and accessible to the public. This initiative was made possible through funding from the Northeast Extension Risk Management Education Center, supported by USDA/NIFA under Award Number 2023-70027-40447, and through the contributions of UMD student workers Lohit Gopikonda and Nicholas Presnar, who played a key role in building and refining the online platform.
To explore the tool and additional resources, visit go.umd.edu/EFMD.
