For every activity on the farm, a decision must be made: Do it myself or hire it out? While farm managers have tools available to understand their own costs to spray or plow a field, comparing that with the market price of having a custom operator complete the job for you can be difficult if such a price is unknown.
To help producers answer that question, University of Idaho Extension periodically surveys farmers and customer operators about the prices they pay or charge for common services and releases the results in our Custom Rate Guide, which can be found on the Idaho AgBiz Management Tools page. We completed our most recent survey in March 2025. Of 130 responses, 39 gave complete information and provided us with results for 127 individual custom operations and are representative of all Idaho regions. While we did not receive responses for every type of work being done, we hope the results listed below help you make decisions for your operation.
We can break most custom operations into 10 categories: (1) land tillage operations, (2) fertilizer and chemical applications, (3) aerial applications, (4) row mark out and fumigation, (5) planting operations, (6) row crop cultivation operations, (7) silage and greenchop harvest operations, (8) small grains, dry bean, dry peas, corn and seed harvest operations, (9) manure services and (10) livestock services.
While we ask that you go to our website to view the full report, we’ve included our survey results for the three most-asked-about categories: tillage, seeding and hay operations. Beyond the numbers, there are a few important items to consider when deciding whether to do it yourself or hire it out (Tables 1-4).
Scale matters. Custom rates can vary greatly depending on the number of acres and the number of miles an operator must travel to get to you. In western Idaho, we heard from an individual who opted to charge by the hour or month for jobs on extremely small acreage (Table 5). As we have more first-time and retired landowners enter the region – we expect this type of arrangement to become more common.
Quality matters. Not all equipment or equipment operators are made equal. Ask yourself – should a professional with new equipment and a good track record work for the same price as your neighbor? In some cases, yes; in other cases, probably not.
Timing matters. Do you have enough time available to accomplish all of your objectives? If not, hiring out may be necessary to complete all your tasks on your preferred timeline.
Relationships matter. Sometimes, an extra dollar per acre is worth maintaining a relationship with the custom operator you’ve used for years. It’s easy to take the reliable option for granted, but it’s prudent to make sure you know what you’re getting into when you make a change.
Survey details:
This survey was conducted over the course of four months. Surveys were collected both online and in paper form. The survey was promoted online, on social media, in radio, agricultural press publications and at events attended by the authors from December 2024 to March 2025. A prior survey (2023) attempted to follow a more detailed line of questioning and did not receive enough responses to publish the results. This survey used an open-ended question format which garnered more results but relied heavily on the authors’ interpretation of each response to place them in the right category. Moving forward, if this survey format is maintained, then report content will vary from survey to survey, depending on the custom operations for which we receive responses.
