Is My Lot Actually Making Money? A Simple Per-Acre Profit Calculation

“Is the lot worth it” is usually answered by feel — a good month feels good, a bad one feels bad. Turning that into an actual number needs exactly four inputs, all of which should already be sitting in a harvest log by the time a month ends.

The calculation

Net profit per acre = (Income − all costs) ÷ acres
Income is tonnage × price received. Costs are everything spent getting that fruit to sale — not just fertiliser.

What counts as a cost

Fertiliser — the bag cost for the month or round (see fertiliser cost per acre).
Cutter and haulage — harvest-day labour and transport (see what a round really pays).
Everything else — weeding, pest control, tools, repairs.

Leaving any of these out doesn’t make the lot more profitable — it just makes the number wrong.

Run it for your lot

Calculator

Net profit per acre, this month

Lot size (acres) Tonnes sold Price received (RM/tonne) Cutter + haulage (RM) Fertiliser this month (RM) Other costs (RM)

Gross income—

Total costs—

Costs as a share of gross—

Net profit—

Net profit per acre—

Track this every month

What to watch over time

One month’s figure is a snapshot; a run of them is where the useful pattern shows up — a fertiliser round landing the same month as a big harvest cost squeezes that month’s number without meaning anything is wrong. Watching the trend across several months, not any single one, is what makes this number actually decision-useful.

Frequently asked

Should I include the value of my own labour?

It depends what you’re trying to answer — excluding it tells you cash profit; including a fair wage for your own time tells you whether the lot would still be worth it if you had to pay someone else to run it.

What’s a reasonable range for costs as a share of gross?

It varies a lot by lot size, distance to mill, and whether labour is hired or family — there’s no single universal benchmark, but tracking your own share over time shows whether it’s creeping up.

Does this work for a farm with multiple lots?

Run it per lot rather than for the whole farm at once — a strong lot can otherwise mask a weak one, and per-lot is the only way to see which is which.

Never do this arithmetic by hand again

SawitSync calculates net profit per lot automatically from the harvests, fertiliser and costs you’ve already logged — no separate spreadsheet needed.

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Is my lot actually making money? A simple per-acre profit calculation