market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Market Farming
List archive
- From: "Bill Shoemaker" <wshoemak AT inil.com>
- To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II
- Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:20:07 -0500
It's one thing to be able to grow $90K worth of produce per
acre, another thing to actually convert it to that much money. And the greater
the effort, the greater the expenses. What was his actual net returns? Perhaps
there's a need for more research.
But an example that bear's out the tremendous value of
production is an acre of tomatoes. It's not unreasonable to produce 20 lb of
tomatoes per plant on some varieties. If you have a population of 4000 plants
per acre, that's 80K pounds of tomatoes. If you market them at $1.25/lb, which
isn't uncommon around here, that's worth $100K/acre. But then reality hits in.
You're only harvesting for about 30 days. You need to successfully market
more than 2600 lb of tomatoes every one of those days at retail value. They
don't last very long so you can't put it off for a few days, especially because
you're still picking. The problem isn't production, it's successfully marketing
at retail on such a scale. However, if you're successful at marketing 20% at
retail, that's $20K/acre. Sell the 75% of the rest in bulk at wholesale for
$0.50/lb. You still bring in another $26K in revenue without the expense of
retail marketing. Total gross revenue = $46K/acre. If expenses are $15K/acre,
you realize a profit of $31K. Unless, of course, hail hits hard just before
harvest. Not an easy business, is it?
All this is just speculation. It's very hard (I know by
experience) to do a business analysis on field production research. It's very
difficult to build in all the risk pressures that growers really face. Just my 2
cents (no inflation).
Bill Shoemaker, Sr Research Specialist, Food
Crops
University of Illinois - St Charles Horticulture Research Center www.nres.uiuc.edu/faculty/directory/shoemaker_wh.html
|
-
[Market-farming] Why do it II,
Christian, 04/21/2008
-
Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II,
Bill Shoemaker, 04/25/2008
- [Market-farming] Monoculture v.s. diversified plantings?, Roni, 04/25/2008
-
Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II,
Sharon and Steve, 04/25/2008
-
Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II,
Krystle, 04/25/2008
-
Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II,
Andy Fellenz, 04/25/2008
- Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II, Krystle, 04/25/2008
-
Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II,
Andy Fellenz, 04/25/2008
-
Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II,
Andy Fellenz, 04/25/2008
- Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II, Sharon and Steve, 04/25/2008
- Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II, Sharon and Steve, 04/25/2008
-
Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II,
Krystle, 04/25/2008
- Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II, Pat Meadows, 04/25/2008
- Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II, JOHN A HENDRICKSON, 04/25/2008
-
Re: [Market-farming] Why do it II,
Bill Shoemaker, 04/25/2008
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.