Herbs - advice wanted

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Mon, 01/16/2012 - 13:00 #1

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12 years 10 months
tdsal2
Last seen: 01/16/2012 - 13:08
Joined: 01/16/2012 - 12:55

Herbs - advice wanted

Hi there,

We have a 23 acre hobby farm (chooks, sheep, ducks, vegies etc), and I have a desire to start growing a small crop of some kind to make some kind of return.  We are located in southern tasmania, and approximately 200 metres above sea level.  So I note that some things don't grow so well, or lag in terms of the seasons.  On the other hand, we seem to have a great climate for herbs!

We grow all sorts, both outside, and in our 22 metre hothouse. I even grow decent basil in a hydroponics setup, and mint grows like weed.

So I'd be very interested in any recommendations or advice on growing small crops of one or more herbs.  In particular, Im confused about where I could sell it.  I work 4 days a week, which doesnt really leave enough time to sell it to the end user - but I'm not sure if I can sell dried or fresh herbs to a distributor of some kind?

 

Thanks for any helpful advice,

Todd

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Sun, 01/29/2012 - 10:56 #2
rogermartyn
Last seen: 03/08/2018 - 21:05
Joined: 10/20/2011 - 16:16

Hi Todd

Good to see you're getting things to grow and looking for opportunities to sell herbs.

 

Regarding growing vegetables in Tasmania, I strongly suggest you get a book by Steve Solomon titled Growing Vegetables South of Australia Year Round Tasmanian Food Gardening.

 

Steve is a VERY experienced grower and has written several books, to much acclaim. He also has been successful in the horticultural seed business.

 

You can find the book at http://www.bookcity.com.au/BookDetail.asp?ISBN=123456789101

 

As with all horticultural ventures, your challenge will not be so much how to grow the produce, but how to sell the produce you grow. If you stick to the basics, growing the herbs will not be difficult. And you'll quickly learn by your mistakes. I've been down this track myself many years ago. With the help of my wife, we successfully propagated nursery stock but ignored our marketing. An expensive and sobering lesson for us.

 

You have already identified that your time is limited. Horticulture and Agriculture husbandry is as much about timing as anything else. Unless you have the opportunity to monitor your crops visually EVERY DAY and have the opportunity to do the odd necessary chore when it is required, regardless of the day of the week, I suggest it will be very difficult for you to succeed.

 

As you mention, selling to the end user will be difficult – you simply will not have the time to both grow and sell your produce. You will therefore need to focus on selling to others, ie local markets, brokers and resellers (green grocers etc). Finding out what they want and what sells will still be essential.

 

Selling at 'Farmer Markets', can short circuit the market chain, allowing you greater margins, but these are normally held just once a week – if they exist in your area, and normally operate for just 4 to 5 hours, typically on a weekend day. This might encroach into your available days too much. It might be better to supply others to sell at such markets, and share the profits.

 

The problem with marketing produce is that unless you can differentiate what you're growing from others, you will commoditise your product and become a 'price taker' rather than be a 'price maker'.

 

There are two components to product differentiation.

 

One is to be able to supply a product that is perceived as being different enough to command a price premium over others. We see many examples of this in the supermarkets, such as convenience packaging, pre-washed potatoes, 'ready to eat' salad components and so on.

 

The other component to differentiating your product is branding. Branding allows your product to be identified from others. Without branding, you're really just a price taker within a smaller pool of partially differentiated products. If for example, your produce became renowned for taste and quality,branding will help your customers find your produce, and hopefully they will be willing to pay a premium to get it.

 

Unfortunately, hoping to differentiating your product on just quality is likely to have limited results; with so many others good at attaining quality it has become the accepted norm. Your produce needs to be of good quality AND offer further advantages others don't. This of course is difficult, and why shouldn't it be? If it isn't, everyone would be doing it.

 

The principal opportunities to differentiate produce that I can readily identify include:

  • Being able to supply consistent quality, and volumes of a given herb, consistently. For example, approaching a restaurant, and saying you can supply 'x' bunches of mint, of this quality, at this price, every week of the year, and regardless of the weather or other market opportunities.This differentiates your product and could be of real interest to a restaurant looking for these qualties.

  • Consumers are increasingly willing to buy food that they know will be 'good for them'. In response, growers are increasingly claiming their food is 'organic'. At a recent farmers market I walked around, it seemed every supplier of fresh produce claimed their food was 'organic'. This was patently nonsense. I saw only one displaying an organic accreditation and growing food organically is not easy. Green-wash is alive and strong and the public are becoming increasingly cynical of it. If you go down the organic route, walk the talk and show transparency in your operation.

    A better option may be to produce food that you can claim is 'nutrient dense'. This means growing food that is both minerally balanced and minerally complete. Most don't appreciate that most organically food grown is not nutritionally dense. Steve Solomon who I mentioned above, who has had decades of experience in growing organic produce can testify to this in his own experience. Steve now minerally balances his soils with fertiliser inputs suitable for his organic production system. Brix testing the juice of produce is a simple and cheap method in helping determine how nutrient dense your produce is – the higher the brix reading, the more dense the nutrients. This something you could do in front of buyers, and even teach others how to do it. Nutrient dense food is a more complete food, it tastes better, stores better (it is less prone to rot), it is firmer, less prone to insect and pathogen attack and overall better for you. Historical nutrient content data for fruits and vegetables spanning the last 50 to 70 years show apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in minerals, vitamins, and protein in groups of foods, especially in vegetables. This is all well documented.  Irrespective of the reasons, this decline has to be reason for concern for all of us. I consider that differentiating produce by demonstrating that your produce is nutrient dense compared to others is an opportunity going begging.

  • People are also concerned about if their food is good for the environment and their local community. For example, being able to demonstrate your produce is grown using controlled release fertilisers that are non polluting to water ways, or that your produce has low food miles since the crop inputs and delivery to markets are all localised, or that you support local labour and businesses for inputs. Buyers are interested in this sort of thing; all you need to do is walk the talk, promote what you're you're doing and be transparent in what you do and don't do. Remember, people are realistic, and if you can only attain 5 out of 8 things you would like to do, you don't have to lie about the remaining 3 in order to still get the sale. In fact letting them know what you can't achieve but do aspire to not only displays honesty in advertising; it may allow someone to suggest solutions.

    You will be aware of the 'buy local, use seasonal produce, low carbon miles' policies some restaurants adopt 'as seen on TV'. Finding (or encouraging) such restaurants and demonstrating that you indeed walk the talk and can supply them produce that meets their standards may be worth perusing.
     

  • Identify similar but complementary producers of food and work with them. For example, are there producers of vegetables and meat with whom you can supply end users directly on a regular basis that you can work with? Get together, create a unique bundle of food (eg nutrient dense meat, herbs, and veges) to supply customers on a weekly basis, and arrange to deliver it to their door. This not only short-circuits the supermarket chains, it is offers something a supermarket is unlikely to be able to emulate and will always struggle to do. Haven't time to organise this, or deliver the food? Find someone who does have the time and offer them the opportunity to work with the group, and so on. Ie, network and don't attempt to do it all by yourself. Since farmers and growers are by nature fiercely independent, I know this will be difficult. However it is therein that lies the opportunity!

I hope these comments provide you viable food for thought.

If you want to learn more about nutrient dense food (plant or animal), and wish to learn how to go about producing it, start a new topic in the forum with a specific question and myself and others will attempt to answer.

 

All the best with your endeavours, let us know what happens

Roger Martyn



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