Market Farming

["Lion Kuntz" <lionkuntz AT email.com>]

Sorry for the delay: been offline since 9.11.

All the land required to grow a crop is divided by the portion of an acre it 
represents. The cash value of the crop is divided by the number of square 
feet to grow it.

One acre earning $43,560 per year would be earning $1/per sq.ft/per year. If 
you got three crops of lettuces per year and retailed the lettuces for 33 
cents each, that's about $1 per spot growing the lettuces. If the lettuces 
are spaced 12 inches in a row, and the rows are 30 inches apart, then 2.5 
square feet grew $1 worth per year. These lettuces would be earning 40 cents 
per square foot, not $1, because the empty row space between lettuces is just 
as necessary as the plant-occupied space.

Some people plant in intensive beds to decrease "waste" space between rows, 
but are impaired from using some kinds of machinery for cultivation. 
Management practices shift some costs from fuel and machinery to human wages 
for labor. Which is right for you is a very personal decision, but the tool 
for evaluating whether you are getting the best yields is the bottom line. 
After all income is received, and all bills are paid, how much money do you 
have left over which is all yours? Is that enough?

Income per square foot can help you measure which crops are doing what you 
need them to do, and which are not measuring up. That's why I translated 
dollars into dollars per square foot.

The measure is deceptive, in that growing a lot more of a high-value retail 
crop turns it into a low-value wholesale crop, because you cannot retail off 
the whole crop before it spoils. So you have no choice but to find a 
wholesaler willing to take them and pay you as little as 17% of what you 
might have made retailing the crop.

I hope I didn't make things seem more complicated than they are. It is really 
just simple division, which helps not only compare apples to apples, but also 
compare apples to oranges to asparagus to popcorn.

-----Original Message-----
From: MMQuiteCon AT aol.com
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 15:01:08 EDT
To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: [market-farming] Re: Market-Farmer Survey Results Posted


> Hi Loni,
>        Do you have a formula regarding square foot return?  Not just the 
> math, but, also the ingredients?
> thank you,  
> mary mary
> 
> 
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