Economic Aspects
Fixed costs
Taking the same farm as an example, we can show which fixed costs even occur when no hops are grown. As hop-growing is very cost-intensive, the depreciation is the largest item.
- Special machinery and equipment:
- Depreciation: for plant material, buildings and machinery. Taxwise on the acquisition value, costwise on the replacement value
- Insurance: employer's liability, comprehensive coverage for tractor, fire insurance for buildings and harvesting technology, employees' industrial compensation society.
- Credits: interest and amortization on credits
The farm in our example has annual fixed costs amounting to 32.498 €
When these costs are divided by the full hop-yielding acreage there is the following result for this farm:
32.498 € / 17,3 ha = 1.878,5 € / ha fixed costs
Depending on the variety and yield obtained the following fixed costs are incurred per kilo hops:
Hop Production