
Rise of the High-Profit Micro Farm (2016) - saycheese
http://modernfarmer.com/2016/10/jm-fortier/
======
willholloway
I've become entranced by the Youtube videos of Urban Farmer Curtis Stone. I
played around with the idea of starting a farm like this and the labor
involved turned me against it, but I can listen to his vlogs for hours while
doing yard work or painting through my wireless headphones.

There is something very human about one person teaching another person to
produce food in the kind of detail he goes in to, and I think time farming
lends itself to quality thinking and reasoning for a philosophically inclined
intelligent person.

They are essentially rediscovering the way humanity grew greens before
tractors and herbicides, but there are some new innovations that are making
these farms work:

1) Growing things like romaine lettuce in holes cut in landscape tarping is
eliminating weeding.

2) They are cutting time from harvest to plate by a few days, and the
resulting quality is much better, and they are not using toxic chemicals to
control pests and weeds.

3) They are using no-till methods, the only input is compost and earth worms
do the tilling work.

I wish that there were more farms like this in my area, because I really hate
the selection and price of organic produce in my supermarkets. It is very much
lacking, or insanely expensive.

~~~
Spooky23
Setup a square foot garden, and get a couple of earth boxes for Tomatoes. It
doesn't take a ton of time, and is very rewarding.

~~~
imaginenore
Tomatoes are truly one of the easiest things to grow, but they seem to be too
cheap to bother with the large-scale production. They also get infected
sometimes, we lost all of our plants at the end of the season a year ago. But
then 2016 had been fine.

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GuiA
I'm assuming this was posted in reaction to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13309610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13309610).

Interesting to see the contrast - on one side, the funded Silicon Valley
"everything you need in a (very expensive) box"; on the other, just a few
people sharing knowledge they've acquired through decades of practice without
using any significantly new technology.

My money's on the latter when it comes to long term impact.

~~~
nadezhda18
>> a few people sharing knowledge they've acquired I also failed to see much
of new knowledge in this article.

it is not very clear from the article how these people managed to achieve such
high profits. Because of a big demand for organic food? And due to their
proximity to a large metro area?

As of the technology they are using, it is not that special... my parents used
to have an extensive vegetable garden (as a consequence of living through a
very hungry period of the USSR collapse). When I was still living with them,
about 20 years ago, they already had these technologies: walk-behind tractors,
vegetable pairings, composting, hand tools. They could feed 4-5 ppl family but
that was it. I remember it required A LOT of manual work non-stop all year
around. We, their grown-up kids, were highly suggesting them to stop brother
and simply go to the local market and buy the food there. Pretty much the same
price, much less labor.

I want to say people left farming for a reason and it looks like now the new
generation either does not know or forgot how hard it is to grow food.

~~~
crewshon
My mum still messing up in garden and bringing to my home some vegs. Because
she just has no job and nothing to do.

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rfdub
Hope these "micro farmers" enjoy the good times while they last as their days
are numbered. Sensors, automation and intelligent, intensive and most
importantly organic, vertical farming is going to ultimately decimate the
small producer farming industry. The thing is produce is a commodity, not a
branded good, and people ultimately don't care what "label" is on their
vegetables and won't pay a premium for a given label when they can get
reasonable analogs for the same or a lesser price. Consumers just want quality
produce at a reasonable price.

When technology driven high intensity automated farms are able to output
yields orders of magnitude greater than these people digging in the dirt with
hand-tools are able to output, at a commensurate if not substantially higher
quality, they'll be able to undercut the prices of these "micro farmers" by
significant amounts and all consumers will care about is that their organic
heirloom greens taste just as good but cost half the price. Not the mention
they'll do so with a substantially reduced environmental impact, requiring
less water per unit of output and requiring substantially less space allowing
formerly agricultural lands to be returned back to their natural state.

Small scale agriculture is a fantastic solution to the problem of disaffected
young people who want to be farmers, but doesn't really offer any practical
solutions for the rest of the world.

~~~
ska
Where can I buy these great tasting heirloom greens at half the price of which
you speak?

I have no problem finding mediocre produce at a low price point, but quality
produce at a reasonable price is often hard to find in major north american
metros.

I'm open to the idea that technology will continue to change the landscape
here, but I think you are underestimating the difficulties. I may be missing
something here, but the successes I see touted in areas as you describe are
things like the plethora of nitrogen bagged greens all over the continent
these days from California. Certainly a commercial success and for access, but
the produce itself is often pretty dismal and the process I understand is very
specialized. Not a categorical win, then.

~~~
Spooky23
It's harder because our wacky economics make it more desirable to plant a
subdivision that to farm. I'm fortunate to live in an area where prime
agricultural land is relatively untouched and several prosperous farms are
around.

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tjic
There seem to be more and more "high tech farm" threads on news.yc over the
last few months, and I've got several friends who are doing the same thing I'm
doing: making a living as a coder, but running a farm as a hobby.

I set up a slack a few months back for a few friends to chat on this topic,
but we didn't have critical mass.

If anyone wants to chat about coders who farm at
[https://codefarmers.slack.com/](https://codefarmers.slack.com/) send me an
email at tjic@tjic.com and I'll invite you in.

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codingdave
We're sharing some of our land this year to someone trying to make this
concept work for them, on a spare acre we've never developed. I don't know if
it is as viable as books and articles claim or not, but I'm absolutely willing
to share my land to let people try.

~~~
louprado
In case you or the farmer post about the experience can you share a
placeholder link now ?

Regardless, I am always amazed by the HN community. You aren't even the
original poster and yet have a direct connection to this random non-tech
story. It is so humbling.

~~~
Vivtek
Oh, it's a tech story. Food is the industry we will literally _never_ grow out
of.

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morley
The article is a little light on detail of how those high profits come to be.
Is it maximizing the amount of produce you can grow, or is it choosing the
highest-margin produce, or is it something you do on the sales or marketing
side? Is it some combination of these things? Where does most of the margin
come from?

~~~
leepowers
High-margin crops, minimal overhead, and intensive cultivation (i.e.,
greenhouses) to get the most out the available space. Pretty much be the only
way to go on a small acreage:

 _> Though his book The Urban Farmer still similarly emphasizes minimal
machinery and biointensive growing, Stone sticks to the highest profit
crops—baby greens, microgreens, and tomatoes, for example._

The other part of this is having a strong local customer base willing to pay a
premium for fresh ingredients.

A fresh tomato, ripened on the vine, and picked and eaten the same day is much
tastier than a store-bought one shipped a thousand miles. Taste-wise it's
almost a completely different foodstuff.

But location is key for this type of business. If there's 200 restaurants
within 20 miles of the microfarm the customer base is good. If there's only
two it's going to be much more difficult.

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faitswulff
I'm not a farmer, but this reads like an advertorial to me.

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mmjaa
I love our house garden, which regularly provides us with daily
sustenance/delight for the most of 8 - 10 months of the year (depending on
yields and canning..) .. to me, it seems really strange that folks don't grow
things in the city. A human being that doesn't grow something is truly missing
out on a valuable experience - even if you live in an apartment, you can grow
food. Its truly a quality of life booster.

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aaron695
Technically not a farm since a most of their profits are from the religion of
organics I'm guessing.

More a church.

Says me who earns less money than they do, religion pays big I guess.

