INFORMATION TEXT SERIES 028 A Worksheet for Nursery Cost of Production

This paper presents a worksheet for estin:ating the cost of producti?n for nurs~ry products. The operations where the worksheet WIll be helpful are characterIzed by a faIrly large number of products, with each product having different input requirements. With such characteristics, the operator needs a method for estimating the cost of rroducing a specific plant, as opposed to the cost of running the entire operation. Costs 0 production and his or her knowledge of the market then enable the manager to do things such as: 1. determine the product mix to produce via knowing which plants are most profitable to the operation; 2. determine whether to produce a plant or buy a plant for resale, and; 3. determine how much to charge for a product. In the future, this worksheet might be adapted for use on a computer, but this paper describes a product that is intended to be completed by hand. This focus is partly because there seems to be a belief that computers provide instant solutions. We want to emphasize that-the computer does NOT do magic, but is just one of often several alternatives for accomplishing a task. In this case, the worksheet we will be completing by hand might als