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  • From: "Lion Kuntz" <lionkuntz AT email.com>
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Talking High-Value Crops
  • Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 08:15:11 +0800


It is only fair that I share some ideas about high-value crops after others
have shared with me through my online survey:
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/survey01.htm
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/survey01_results.html

Reishi mushrooms are selling retail in my area (Olympia, Washington, USA) at
$72 per pound at three different locations. They take five months to mature
from spawning, similar time-range to shiitake mushrooms, and require warm
summer conditions for production outdoors in shadecloth or shaded production
areas.

Containers such as 3.5 gallon buckets or plastic growbags can be packed in
beds (since no access to individual containers is required until harvest,
access pathways are not needed into the bedding areas).

A harvestable density of a fresh wet-weight one pound per square foot is
possible. Dried reishi takes seven fresh-hydrated pounds to produce one dry
pound, so $10/sq.ft is possible. One 10'x10' bed could produce $1,000.oo in
five months. The dried form is the normal market commodity, so they have a
long shelf-life marketing term of a year to find buyers.

For CSA/subscription/membership farmers, oyster mushrooms (Pleuratus
Ostreatus, P.Floridii, P.pulmanarius, P.d'jamour) can transform 100 pounds of
straw into as much as 20 pounds of mushrooms in five weeks.

Here in this area supermarket chains are buying in these mushrooms from as
far away as Tennessee, which are NOT fresh on the shelves. Local growers have
a freshness niche to compete. Prices of $1.99 for 3 ounce foam tray pre-packs
give a price of $10.61 retail per pound, or $200 per four-square-feet of
growing space in a growroom.

The crops can be repeated 3 or 4 times each spring and again in the fall, and
can be grown year round in air conditioned/heated garage, shed, barn,
greenhouse (shadecloth required) or utility building. Outdoor growing is
possible during ideal weather in screened and shaded semi-protected gazebos
or patio screen-tent.

Earth worms multiply their population every 90 days. The retail sacked value
of earthworm castings is five dollars per cubic foot (every 90 days) and
$20.oo per pound (two pounds harvestable mixed sizes increase in population
every 90 days.

At $45 per square foot (actually cubic foot) this is $135 for three harvests
per year per foot of growing land. A bin made from one sheet of plywood
(4'x8'x16") with another sheet for a lid can produce 42.5 cubic feet of
castings and 64 pounds of earthworms on a footprint the size of a sheet of
plywood.

This is about 1.5 cubic yards per 90 days. Gardeners love this stuff. Five
bucks per 5 gallon pot is retail income of $7.50 per foot. If you have
chickens, 64 pounds of earthworms grows 20 pounds of chicken meat, which
free-range organic retails up to $80 (20# x $4) if you can't find buyers for
earthworms. At the lowest prices you ought to be able to get $10 per foot per
year out of earthworm bins.

Basil has been grown in stacked pot cultures in university greenhouse trials.
20.8 ounces average production per plant was measured. 24 plants were stacked
on a single square footprint of land.

That is 500 ounces per stack, or 31.2 pounds. The actual ground space
required is about 8 square feet per tower for access of light, air
circulation, inspection and harvesting, so the productivity is averaged down
to 4 pounds per square foot.

It need not be grown in greenhouses -- the university happened to be testing
for wintertime productivity in northern Florida. Anywhere basil (or many
other high-value herbs) can be grown outdoors they can be grown in vertical
culture.

Strawberries are highest value just before the season, and 1,000 pounds have
been produced ripening in April/May using unheated poly-skinned tunnel
growhouses in raised beds near Branson, Missouri.

Tunnel floorspace was 10'x50' or 500 square feet. At prices of $2/pint this
is $4/sq.ft. in five months, leaving the tunnel free for a heat-loving
high-value crop of trellised melons, cucumbers or tomatoes planted in May.
Easily another $5/square foot can be produced.

Zinnas at 25 cents per flower stem will produce $6 to $10 worth of $3/dozen
bouquet flowers in the same time and space that it takes to grow one or two
ears of sweet corn. Repeat customers will be back next week.

African Daisies will produce the same number of stems for cut flowers, but
all the imperfect ones and unsold ones can be dried down into pyrthrum
insecticide which will only lose 20% potency in one year of proper storage.
Calendula is an edible flower, a medicinal herb, poor-man's saffron food
coloring, a cut flower of similar value to zinnia or african daisy, and can
be dried for crafts use as an everlasting.

While CSA customers bolt to the supermarket if insufficient variety is
offered by the market farmer, CSAs sell out their capacity when offering
nothing more than 1/3rd the variety of the supermarket green grocery section.
Few CSAs and farmstands or farmers market stands offer fresh eating mushrooms
and valuable dried medicinal ones, herb teas and cooking blends (like salad
dressing herbs for the salad greens you sell), cut flowers and edible
flowerheads, organic free-range chickens and high grade potting soil and
amendments.

While you have to produce a volume of low-value bulk vegetables of a high
grade of taste, freshness and appearance, the high-value crops can add
sufficient extra value to justify raising basic prices and offering
extra-cost options. There is just as much hard work and risks in raising
high-value crops as there is in raising the bulk commodities, so this is not
a get-rich-quick pitch.
Anybody who wants more information on these things ought to follow the links
found on the following webpages:
http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/MarketGarden.html
http://www.imok.ufl.edu/LIV/groups/cultural/trial/basil.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/1444/berry-b.htm
http://www.vertigro.com/images/h2-wide.jpeg
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/low_tech_mushrooms01.htm
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/growing_earthworms.htm
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/earthworms_01.htm
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/castings_01.htm
http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/synergy1.html

Sincerely, Lion Kuntz
Tenino, Washington, USA

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  • Talking High-Value Crops, Lion Kuntz, 09/09/2001

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