If you hire someone to do custom work for your farming operation, what are they charging you? Is the amount per acre higher, lower or about average compared with what other custom operators are charging in your area?
The annual Iowa Farm Custom Rate Survey, conducted by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, reports the average pricing for common services such as tillage, spraying, planting, fertilizer application, grain harvesting, forage harvesting, grain bin rental, grain drying, hauling and more. The survey report for 2025 is available at extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a3-10.pdf.
Many Iowa farmers hire custom operators. Others rent machinery or do custom work for neighbors. Whether you hire custom work or provide services or rent machinery, you can review and compare your rates with those paid across the state.
Helpful information
A summary of the 2025 survey report was published in the March edition of ISU’s Ag Decision Maker digital newsletter.
The report is based on 193 responses and 3,703 custom rates provided by Iowa farmers, custom operators and farm managers. The survey was mailed to 371 people via U.S. mail and 633 via email in February.
Farm tasks listed in the report include everything from planting to harvesting, with custom rate cost data that reflects the average, median and range for each task.
Rates in the report are the amounts expected to be charged or paid in 2025 and include fuel and labor unless otherwise noted. Average price for diesel fuel (highway-retail including taxes) was assumed to be $3.66 per gallon (as projected by U.S. Energy Information Administration in early February).
If you are interested in renting machinery and want to compare your cost with rental charges elsewhere, the survey can help you with this too. Rental rates for some machinery items are shown in the last section of the report, along with a worksheet for estimating rental rates for other machinery.
Rates have increased
Ann Johanns, ISU Extension program specialist and editor of Ag Decision Maker, says the report is a valuable resource for custom operators and for people who hire custom work in Iowa.
“This survey report is heavily used by Iowans and others across the Midwest, as the 170,000 downloads of the 2024 publication in the past year shows,” Johanns says. “The 2025 survey found there is a 5% price increase across all surveyed categories. The change from 2024 to 2025 varies across categories, with complete harvesting and hauling for corn and soybeans increasing by 9% and hired labor going up by 4%.”
The custom rate survey is intended to be used only as a guide. Actual custom rates may vary according to availability of machinery in a given area, timeliness, operator skill, field size and shape, crop conditions and the performance characteristics of the machine being used.
“The survey is a valuable starting point in custom rate discussions, but any custom rate charged or paid should cover the operator’s cost of owning and operating the machinery being used,” Johanns says. “You need to know your costs. Just using the results of the survey alone might not be the right answer for your individual operation.”
Know your costs
If operators don’t have a good handle on their individual costs to own and operate specific machinery, there are helpful resources on the Ag Decision Maker website. They are listed in the Custom Operations and Machinery Management categories.
In addition to the “usual” operations, the 2025 Iowa Custom Rate Survey report has results for bulldozing, applying manure, crop scouting, rock picking, subsoiling, strip-tilling and many more.
Of the 3,446 usable responses on custom operations, 54% are service providers, 25% are service users, 6% are both service providers and users, and 15% are unknown. Sources of the 92 rates reported for machinery rentals are 56% machinery owners, 23% machinery renters, 8% machinery owners and renters, and 13% unknown. Sources of the 165 rates reported for wages are 86% employers, 5% employees, 2% employer and employee, and 7% unknown.
Historical custom rate data is summarized in Ag Decision Maker File A3-12, and past publications of the Iowa Farm Custom Rate Survey to year 2000 also are available online.
Survey participants needed
Information available in the annual Iowa Farm Custom Rate Survey is only possible due to the responses provided each year. If you are interested in joining the 2026 survey, send your mail or email address to Ann Johanns, ISU Borlaug Learning Center, 3327 290th St., Nashua, IA 50658, or contact her at 515-337-2766 or aholste@iastate.edu.
“We encourage farmers who do custom work — and farmers who hire custom work for their farming operation — to please participate in our survey,” Johanns says. “We appreciate your help.”