This handbook is intended to help government, university, private sector, and other users become better acquainted with the concepts and data underlying the Department of Agriculture's statistical series. The introduction reviews what various pieces of federal legislation say about the computation of agricultural production costs by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The survey methods that the department uses to collect its statistical data are explained next. The section on enterprise budgets covers (1) cash receipts, expenses, and returns and (2) economic costs and returns. The following aspects of using enterprise budgets to estimate production costs are outlined: preparation of survey results, budget assumptions and data sources, and regional and national aggregations. Cost and return indicators are discussed in a section on the use of cost-of-production data. An annotated bibliography concludes the handbook. (MN)