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Horticulture Biz Quiz
95 Plays1 year ago
Join us as we explore the Kentucky Horticulture Biz Quiz, a free online tool that can help you assess the feasibility of your horticulture business idea. The Biz Quiz is available at https://www.uky.edu/ccd/bizquiz and it consists of 15 questions that cover various aspects of starting and running a horticulture operation, such as market demand, production costs, labor needs, and profitability. By taking the Biz Quiz, you can get a score that indicates how ready you are to pursue your horticulture venture, as well as feedback and resources to improve your chances of success. Whether you are interested in growing fruits, vegetables, herbs, flowers, or ornamentals, the Biz Quiz can help you make informed decisions and avoid common pitfalls. Tune in to hear more about this valuable tool and how it can benefit you as a potential or existing horticulture entrepreneur.
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Hort Culture'
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture. What up? How's everybody doing today?
Banter and Personal Stories
00:00:20
Speaker
Good. Living the dream. Sun is shining. It's wintertime, and anytime the sun is shining in the winter, I feel like it's a pretty good day. That's true. Yeah. Can't complain about that.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm trying to remember you said live in the dream, and I said something. I went to the doctors the other day, and what did I say to him? And he was very concerned for my mental health. I'll come up with it. We need to know what that was that you said. Right, so I can not repeat it when they ask me. He was like, that doesn't sound good. And I was like, no, no, no, it's great. I said, oh, oh, I remember it. I said, the horrors persist, but so do I.
00:00:56
Speaker
I mean, that's not a red flag. That's not a red flag at all. Like a Victorian journal. Yeah. Lovecraft. And I was like, no, no, but like, so do I. Yeah. You missed the second part. So that's greet people that way these days. The horrors persist, but so do I. Alexis Lovecraft, author and horticulturist. Also horror is hard to say in a sentence I have found.
00:01:24
Speaker
It is. It is. It's a tough one. Like rural juror. Yes. Rural juror. For some reason, a lot of the other podcasts I listen to have people from the Northeast and they really struggle to say the word rural. They're like, rural, rural, rural. The more you think about it, the worse it becomes. Absolutely. Just the R's, man. The R's are hard.
Episode Highlights: Stats & Spreadsheets
00:01:50
Speaker
This is a bald boy episode.
00:01:54
Speaker
It's a bald boy episode. Exactly. It's their wheelhouse. They're spitting stats at us today. Bars. Lots of numbers and things and programs and softwares and things. Calculations, spreadsheets. Calculations and spreadsheets. And I'm gone. Don't worry. It'll be fun. I promise. We just lost those folks that might have been listening. The horrors do persist, but so will you.
00:02:19
Speaker
The next 40 minutes, we'll be describing pie charts to you. Just close your eyes and imagine. How about let's just drop charts and just describe some pies. Drop charts and describe some pies, yeah. Hopefully, yeah. Can we talk about some pies?
Listener Questions: Starting Horticulture Projects
00:02:36
Speaker
We're talking about the horticulture biz quiz, which maybe it's helpful to start out just conceptually what we were trying to get at.
00:02:45
Speaker
Alexis Ray, do you all as agents occasionally hear things from producers questions like, so I just got 10 acres, uh, or I'm thinking about 10 acres getting them. What do I do to that? Yeah. In fact, that was the very first episode, I believe that we ever did as a group on this podcast was, you know, just on that same topic, but yeah, that's a common question. And.
00:03:15
Speaker
more than anything, they're just looking for a way to frame things or a way to think about things with some kind of structure. What should they be thinking about? I mean, I guess that's what it boils down for me is they're asking me, what should they be thinking about at that point in time? That's a lot. That's a very regular question for us. Yeah, it's common.
00:03:37
Speaker
Yeah, so another just quick question, side note, have you all noticed a lot of people moving into your counties from out of state more so than usual, more so than in the past? I have Hawaiians and New Yorkers and who else? Pennsylvania and several from California that lost their homes in the fire. And so they were like, we're going to relocate to Kentucky. I just thought it was a water.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, let's go somewhere that it doesn't, you know, burn. Uh, so yeah, I've got, I've got a lot in my area and I've got, you know, a small college, uh, in our town. So I think that helps a little bit, but recently in the past, probably five years or so, we've had a lot of implants around Boyle County. I always notice when we have some, I mean, of course we're a big horse industry County and that brings, you know, folks traveling into and out of the County.
00:04:33
Speaker
the population stays fairly stable in the county that I am in. But yeah, I've noticed a little bit of that. I don't know if it's just me becoming aware of that and becoming more sensitive when someone mentions that they're from out of town. But just last week I talked to a couple of folks that were from out of town. And it's interesting what brought them to a couple of factors. You know, family changes, a daughter kind of grew up, went to college here in the States and they moved from Texas to Kentucky.
00:04:58
Speaker
And then they had large farm operation out in Texas. But one of the motivations for not doing that particular activity and more farming was water rights and some complications there or lack of access to water. But yeah, there's lots of different reasons why people move around. But I do see that even in the county I'm in.
Understanding Horticulture Audiences
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, I've noticed that over the last few years, like at conferences and other things, just, you know, maybe it's a confirmation bias or I'm paying attention more, but I have noticed that. The reason I even mention it is not for any sort of nativistic rabble rousing about all these people coming in or anything like that. It's because we tried to remain aware of the types of audiences that we serve through the Center for Crop Diversification.
00:05:44
Speaker
And the ways that the horticulture folks or the diversified people or people maybe who are interested in certified organic or something along those lines, they're kind of a different crew than others, and their interests are different. And I think a lot of these folks who are coming in from other places particularly jibe with some of the things that we offer.
00:06:06
Speaker
The CCD, just as a little brief backstory, the CCD was started under a very different name, New Crop Opportunity Center back in 2000 after the... Tobacco settlement. Tobacco settlement. Thank you.
00:06:23
Speaker
The goal was partially to provide some quick hitting resources, publications and other types of resources for people who were realizing they weren't going to be doing tobacco as much as they were in the past to transition to other, potentially to other enterprises. It hasn't exactly worked out precisely in that way, but we did happen to have this big suite of publications that we've kept up to date over the last two and almost two and a half decades.
00:06:54
Speaker
And that wasn't me, I've only been around the CCD since 2015, but it provided a really rich database for us to use to build this little tool that does essentially the same thing I just said, which is to take all of the potential horticulture operations and options.
The Hort Biz Quiz: Assessing Readiness
00:07:12
Speaker
and provide, like you said, Ray, some structure to considering them, weighing them, and evaluating your own strengths and weaknesses in light of those things. So that was the grand ambition of the Horp Biz Quiz. In reality, it's a pretty humble little tool that I think has been really useful to a number of people. And it essentially asks,
00:07:31
Speaker
in a ... I describe it as a less cool but similar to the Buzzfeed quiz that asks you what Thanksgiving food is your personality type, like those types of things. They ask you questions about yourself, maybe something out on the back end, a quizzical or a quiz entertainment. I don't know what it's called.
00:07:52
Speaker
So the questions, do they kind of direct people's thinking? Is that what kind of your access people feel this out? Is that kind of going to direct them and give them things that they should be thinking about sort of thing? Yeah, yeah. That was the idea was that we would structure the questions to guide their thinking through and importantly at the end spit out some recommendations of a few crops you might want to think about, a few crops you probably want to avoid. So for example, if you don't have any access to any labor,
00:08:21
Speaker
Please don't put out five or 10 acres of tomatoes. It's surprising how often that happens. I mean, that seems like a simple straightforward statement not to do that, but it is absolutely incredible how many times that we work with folks. And some of that is just because they've never done it before and it's hard to conceptualize how much labor you need. But yeah, that's a big one.
00:08:44
Speaker
It's a big one. Or like people who want, they want to grow watermelons in their high tunnels. It's just, it's, spoiler alert, watermelons generally, I mean, you can't, you can do anything, right? You can plant anything. Don't tell me what I can do. You can do anything once. You know, that's an example of a crop that grows really, really large amounts of foliage to support, relatively to support the amount of fruit that comes off of it.
00:09:10
Speaker
So that's more suited to someone who has expansive land available, for example. So Josh, maybe you can, Josh has spent more time with the actual data coming out of it. I had originally, Christy Cassidy and I had pulled together the original tool and have had it out there floating. And now we're four years in. Josh, maybe you want to talk a little bit about the structure and like the different categories of land and all land labor capital, all that kind of stuff and just share some of the things we've seen from it.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, essentially, like Brett said, you answer these questions about the availability of capital you have to invest in a horticultural enterprise, how much space you have, and how much access to labor you have. And through that, it gives you some recommendations for things to consider and avoid. And those boundaries for whether or not somebody has access to enough
00:10:07
Speaker
Capital for example is if they have more than $5,000 to invest they would be considered to have access to They are yes to the answer of access to capital if they have more than an acre
00:10:21
Speaker
to dedicate to a horticultural enterprise, then yes, land is not something that they're limited by. And labor, that was a little bit more difficult. Basically, there's categories of how would they characterize it, how much labor do they have beyond what they can provide themselves.
00:10:41
Speaker
There's three answers, a little, a moderate amount, or a lot. Anybody who answered a moderate amount or a lot is said to have access to labor. And from that, and as Brett said, this quiz has been running, up and running, and collecting responses for over four years at this point. It started August 1, 2018.
00:11:08
Speaker
at the end of July, 2023 is when we pulled the data and started kind of analyzing it a little bit to see what patterns exist and things like that.
00:11:22
Speaker
and also had kind of uncovered a way because people have participated in this quiz from all over the world. We have answers from as far away as, you know, China or Afghanistan. And it wasn't exactly clear that we could kind of geographically assign where these answers were coming from easily, but uncovered a way to do that to kind of
00:11:49
Speaker
just be able to develop categories for people who are answering from probably from within Kentucky, probably from within our region, probably from within the US, and then the kind of global data set.
Quiz Insights: Resources & Challenges
00:12:02
Speaker
And just to throw out some numbers, you know, in that four year period, from the global answers, there's almost a thousand responses. It's like 942. From Kentucky alone, we have
00:12:18
Speaker
just under, or sorry, just over 400. So most of the answers in general, or just a large portion of them are coming from Kentucky or from within the region, we decided that that would be Kentucky as well as all the states that Kentucky touches. And so that 61% of all responses were those people in that group. So it's very much kind of oriented to this group.
00:12:46
Speaker
And just to be clear, the main reason we put it into effect was to use it as a tool for people to figure out where they fit and make decisions, just like the price reports that we do.
00:13:00
Speaker
We don't, we weren't thinking of it as data set first. We were thinking of it as useful tool first. And so if you're a producer and you're interested in this, you go and you click the link, you spend two to three minutes and you get an answer and that's it. So a lot of this more like the categories and stuff is interesting and cool for us to talk about. And we will continue, we'll talk more about it, but that's one thing. And the other, I think I just emphasize again that I didn't do a very good job with earlier is just essentially it's, it's investigating whether you have land, labor, and capital.
00:13:29
Speaker
These are three important pieces of any enterprise of any sort that's gonna rely on my hands. That's sort of the big puzzle pieces. Yeah. And maybe someone hasn't thought about it in those terms, and even that has value even starting to think about things, the big puzzle pieces in those terms. Yeah. Yeah. And the other component is it doesn't in any way, and it's not meant to, but it doesn't in any way
00:13:55
Speaker
ask whether you've looked at it or not, but it doesn't provide any guidance on whether or not there actually is a market for the product that you're interested in growing. If you want to grow broom corn and you want to grow 500 acres of broom corn, you may have the land and the labor and the capital to be able to do that, but where are you going to sell that much broom corn?
00:14:19
Speaker
That's probably a different program or different publications. It's a different thing. And there is a question that asks you whether you considered it or not, whether you've considered your market or not. But ultimately, it's not one of the main variables. But yeah, I'm kind of curious what your all's experience has been with it. I think one of the most beneficial things. So people are coming to us to ask these questions.
00:14:47
Speaker
Before the Biz, the Hort Biz Quiz, we were the Biz Quiz, right? As agents, people would come in and say, you know, what do I do? And I said, well, what kind of, how much land you got? We'd ask all these questions. And I think the Hort Biz Quiz did a good job of making those questions easier and simplifying them. Like a first contact kind of thing. Yeah. And so when I get those questions, I, that's the first thing I send them to because what I tell people, and you know, I kind of walk them through, sometimes we do it on the phone, like they're on the phone doing it. We do it together. They come in and we do it together.
00:15:15
Speaker
But like you said, it makes them think about all of these things But then when they get the answers if it's you know something they had already thought of then great like it's kind of an automatic like This is what we should be doing and then we start talking about the market about a soil test about all that kind of stuff Sometimes getting their buckets in place. Yeah Right, they never thought about and sometimes it's like
00:15:42
Speaker
It gives them kind of a rude awakening a little bit like, uh, you know, well, I've taken, I've had people call me and they're like, I've taken it three times and I, I've not gotten what I thought I w what I wanted to do. And I'm like, well, you can do whatever you want to do. Like by all means, um, we will help you with that, but maybe this is a sign from the universe. Right. So a little bit. And I think it's just really, I'm such a big fan of it and I spit it to everybody that I can.
00:16:12
Speaker
That is just, if any, even if you don't get the answers you want it, I think it makes you think about those different areas to start that are important. It's a, it's a good endorsement that good. Yeah. Some of the toughest contacts in on a county level in a field kind of perspective is that first contact.
00:16:35
Speaker
And some people come to us with all sorts of different experiences. Some people have a lot of experience. And then there's some of those folks that don't have any experience. And that's the ones I think tools like this can help us as field agents, but also help us help others. So it is a good tool, and it's one that I recommend.
00:16:55
Speaker
So if you're new or you want to start, even if you're not new to farming, but you want to start a new enterprise, like you can still use this even if you are already growing watermelons and you're like, what else could I maybe do? And it's just, we get you thinking and it's a good thing to take in to your local extension office is just be like, this is what I came up with. I love that when people bring me that print out or that list.
00:17:19
Speaker
And then I can go through with my experience on growing each of those and be like, well, you know, you had mentioned to me earlier that you didn't really love, you know, bending over to pick stuff. So either you're going to have to invest in a bean picker, or maybe we'll go with the second thing on your list, which is, you know, apples, you know, or, or whatever that is.
00:17:39
Speaker
And so you can just dive in deeper, I think a lot faster with the biz quiz. I don't know. I'm just, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of it. I tell everybody about it. So you're welcome for those numbers. Thank you. Thank you for that. No, that, I mean, that was one of the things that we're, cause we, you know, this is a little bit of the reflection on extension, but Josh and I work at
Support for County Agents
00:18:00
Speaker
the campus level. So in theory we're supporting out in the state and I've always said,
00:18:04
Speaker
My primary audience or my primary clientele are agents because there are in Kentucky, we have agents in every county. And so the things that we can do to help them in their job of supporting other people, that was kind of the main goal. And so one of the things that it spits out in, in the, you know, you got a lot of labor considered growing these stuff, this, these things. One of the things it says is here is how you find your county agents contact information. You can print this out, take it to them.
00:18:33
Speaker
And it also helps with the awkward conversation of asking them how much money they want to put into something. They're like, okay. And it puts a little bit of boundaries on like, what is a lot of money? That's something I struggle with in a lot of things where people be like, oh, that thing was really expensive. And I'm like, so was it like $100 or like $100,000? Because I have no idea what you're talking about. It can be either, yeah. And you mentioned that, Ray, being not familiar with this.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, Josh came up with some, like I said, he's been doing some analytics stuff with some of this and came up with kind of these different categories. Do we want to talk about the categories first or do we want to go and maybe just click through the report and I can kind of read the questions and answer to kind of give a sense? I feel like reading the questions first would help frame the categories. Yeah.
00:19:29
Speaker
That was what I was hoping you would say. You let us into that. Well, information received. Well-framed question. Yes. So you can find this. It's just right on the homepage of the Center for Crop Diversification right at the top. It's the uky.edu slash ccd. And there's a graphic at the very top that's kind of got some clipart-y.
00:19:51
Speaker
stuff and it says, take the Hort Biz quiz. And I clicked on that and it opens up a thing that says, hello, welcome CCD, Hort Council, UK, et cetera. And so you click, go ahead and click through and it'll ask you what county you're in. It'll ask if you're currently, are you growing horticultural crops at present? And so you could say yes or no on that. Um, asks you what horticulture crops do you grow? If you, if you answer no, then it won't show you that, but
00:20:20
Speaker
And then do you want to grow horticulture crops as part of a business? In other words, to make money. That's a question that we don't...
00:20:27
Speaker
We end up answering it and talking about it in an extension a lot, but it's something that I bring up in a lot of my, when I go out and talk to people, because even at a farmer's market, there are people who are at that market, not because they want to sell, because they want to make money. It's because they want to have something to do. It's almost like a retirement hobby thing. I think that that plays a lot sometimes in our pricing issues that people don't price things enough.
00:20:52
Speaker
high enough because their goal or they might have a more of a mission goal where they're trying to get more fresh produce into their community through this mechanism and so they're not trying to make money or do it as part of a business and that's great. We have we are we are in the business of supporting everyone regardless of what their goals are but there's a lot of confusion and heartache and other things that come with.
00:21:14
Speaker
not admitting from the get-go that I don't really care about making money or I do care about making money and so I'm gonna need to make some more ruthless decisions than maybe I would like to. So anyway, that's the spirit of that question. And then let's see, how would you rate your current knowledge of growing horticultural crops? This is all kind of background information.
00:21:33
Speaker
And so the way that I clicked it through there, saying, I don't know, I don't have any interest. I don't really want to sell or anything like that. It spits out an answer that says it appears you may not be ready to grow horticultural crops for sale. That's good to know because some hort crops are a bit more complicated than others and very unforgiving. Yep. Yes. Because if you don't have any experience growing stuff, then there's no point in going beyond that because you're going to
00:21:58
Speaker
you're going to be depending on producing a result that you've literally never produced before. You can go back and change your answers within the session to see if you mess something up or whatever.
00:22:15
Speaker
I went back and changed my experience level and said I was a more advanced grower. Do I have a specific crop in mind? Do you have a specific market in mind for your enterprise? What market do you have in mind? How much capital do you have to commit to this enterprise? This is what we're getting to what Josh was saying. This is where the categorizations really starts. That is none, $1 to $5,000.
00:22:37
Speaker
$5,000 to $10,000, so more than 5,000, but less than 10,000. 10 to 15,000 or more than $15,000. At this point, Josh, we are saying that there's basically two categories. There's people who have less than $5,000 or people who have more than $5,000.
00:22:58
Speaker
In that case, we're considering the less than $5,000 to be a little bit more capital constrained and the more than 5,000 to have access to some capital to really think about some of the more capital intensive ventures. Correct, yeah. Yeah, so that's one. Do you have capital? Yes, we take this more subtle gradations of money and we turn it into a, yes, you've got a decent amount of capital or no, that's not a strength in your current portfolio is having a lot of money to put toward this.
00:23:29
Speaker
So that's one. So I'm going to say for this one here that I have five to $10,000. It seems like you have access to some capital of the following which most closely describes your access to land. I have no plans to own or lease land. I'm planning to lease or purchase land. I'm currently leasing or I currently own.
00:23:48
Speaker
So I'm going to say that I currently own land and I currently, and it says, how much land do you have? Uh, and the answer here being one to, I'm going to say one to five acres, but it's less than one acre, one to five or more than five for horticulture in Kentucky, five acres of anything is a pretty good amount.
Interpreting Quiz Results
00:24:05
Speaker
Would you all agree with that? Oh yeah. 100%.
00:24:09
Speaker
I mean, I think it's a lot anywhere. It just depends on what, what the scale. And so then, then it takes me to this thing that says, okay, so I indicated that I had some capital, I had more than $5,000 in my case, and I have access to some, but, and I do, or will have access to land. So then it asks me how much labor do I have? And I say, okay, I have a lot, I have a moderate amount, or I have little to none. And this is beside, this is how much labor can you access besides yourself? So I'm going to say for me, I have a moderate amount of labor.
00:24:39
Speaker
I'm gonna click through, and okay, now I've come to my results page here. Now my results page is suggesting to me that I have access to capital, I have access to land, and I have access to labor.
00:24:51
Speaker
And then it gives a little blurb here. Having access to capital means you may be able to invest in equipment, branding and marketing and other startup costs. Land access, whether through rent or through ownership is a huge advantage. And generally horticulture operations don't require massive amounts of land, but having some is a really good start. There's no getting around it. Horticulture crops are labor intensive though. Since you have access to at least some labor, you have an advantage as you start your operation. Don't forget to account for the costs to pay that labor, especially if you are limited in starting capital.
00:25:22
Speaker
And so it has your next steps where you can print or screenshot your results. And then it also, there's a little bit of additional resources page, but it says here, this is where it would say typical types of crops. It's saying, because you have everything basically, you're one of the lucky ones, you're in a position to grow anything that you have the market to support. And since you're planning to sell your crops, it's imperative you identify your markets before you plant, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:25:47
Speaker
If I had answered anything differently to any of those, like for instance, if I had said that I didn't have access to labor, it would give me some things based on I have capital, I have land, maybe something like watermelons or something like butternut squash or something like that. So anyway, you could just see, you can go through and answer questions and get this little kind of pithy answer spit out at the end and it will help guide the conversation.
00:26:14
Speaker
So Josh, you want to maybe go in a little bit to the, some of the archetypes or the different considerations and maybe throw out a couple of them and we can see, think about crops that maybe we would suggest or not suggest or something like that. I mean, as far as like what the breakdown kind of responses are or just. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Like, like, uh, do you have Kentucky numbers handy? Uh, let's see these ones that I'm looking at. Yeah. Yeah. Let me, let me pull those up. Um,
00:26:45
Speaker
But more or less, even the global numbers are heavily skewed towards Kentucky. And I will say that across the board, wherever they are, they follow the same kind of patterns, or they're very similar. Like, Kentucky isn't wildly different than the US responses.
00:27:05
Speaker
But like for, for example, the one that you just gave somebody who's unconstrained by capital land or labor, uh, that represented, uh, 20% of all Kentucky responses. So 20% of people have land labor labor and some capital. Yeah. Well, that's true. That sounds pretty good. Pretty good. So far, 20%. That seems significant.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, like the largest group or archetype were the ones that are capital constrained and labor constrained, but not land constrained. They have at least an acre, but they don't have any labor besides themselves. And they're operating with less than $5,000 in investment capital. What was the percent of that?
00:28:04
Speaker
I just bought 10 acres or I have 10 acres. What do I do now? Well, I also don't have any money and I don't have any labor. So what do I do? Yeah. In my mind, when I talk to folks in that category, it's sort of the way I look at it, my mind, um, as I click through the conversation that I'm having with, with whoever at that time is they're aspirational, but they're also transitional because usually when someone is in that situation, I'll, I'll,
00:28:16
Speaker
a quarter of all responses.
00:28:27
Speaker
Well, don't make any drastic life changes. It may be that you try this out since you do have some resources. You can try out things realizing what the limiting factors are and maybe slowly scale up or slowly ramp up.
00:28:44
Speaker
And that's sort of how I handle that. And we kind of talk about that rather than jumping in with huge risks because you have land resources, for instance. I mean, that's pretty exciting to some folks. And it's pretty exciting to me if you have land resources. But the other two factors are really important also. If you don't have a lot of capital to lose, it obviously may change how you look at risk. So you kind of go into things.
00:29:08
Speaker
certain enterprises just aren't appropriate. Maybe green beans or something that's fairly cheap to get into and you can make some profit from and learn the business. I mean, yeah, it really guides me. You know, these answers in these categories do in my mind. And right on their heels, the other group that's almost as big, say 24% in the Kentucky responses is the ones that have land and have some access to labor but are capital constrained.
00:29:37
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think, you know, in both of those cases, we everybody always kind of wants to get started as soon as possible, or they want to they get this itch to start. And I get that myself, I get excited, excited about stuff. And usually, if this is your second career, or if this is your your family's home place, and you want to turn it into doing something different, or what, whatever the reason is, it's often very exciting.
00:30:05
Speaker
I think both of those cases would benefit enormously from doing some business planning, exploratory business planning and market exploration.
00:30:15
Speaker
And I think in the meantime, you could be doing some of the techniques and approaches like we've talked about things like cover cropping or things like soil testing and getting a sense of what the land is and what it can be used for, maybe trying your hand, depending on how much experience you have. If you haven't grown, there is a difference between growing 10 tomato plants and a thousand tomato plants.
00:30:42
Speaker
There's a difference between growing 10 tomato plants, 1000 tomato plants and two acres of tomatoes. There really is a growing pain. There are growing pains associated with those things. And so that's where some of the bridge markets, things like a farmer's market or things like a local grocer, local, some other kind of that type of output, or maybe doing some canning or something like that.
00:31:06
Speaker
can be useful as you start to build the skills and don't get into such a rush to make money. Because if you bought the land and you say, I gotta make money off of this because I bought the land, well, that means you made a bad decision in terms of your business planning. If you don't know how you're gonna make money off the land and you bought it in this case. And I mean, I'm not, you know, we'll work with you and help, but in general, if you're in a situation where you're just kind of, you have the land, you have access to it, maybe you don't have the capital yet, thinking about saving, thinking about business planning,
00:31:33
Speaker
Does that sound like a reasonable recommendation from your else's perspective? Any other thoughts? I think there's a lot of research to be done. I tend to be a pull the trigger kind of person. I like to do a lot of research. Let's go.
00:31:51
Speaker
There's you can you can forget there's a saying about it but like you know you can scare yourself by collecting too much information so at some point you gotta you gotta do something and I think that that something could be cover cropping or making connections in
Market Exploration and Planning
00:32:07
Speaker
the market.
00:32:07
Speaker
Seeing what where you're gonna sell sometimes doing something is is not even yet to the actual growing of the product yet which is nice for people like me who just like want to do something you can do something productive and that will yield help you in the future.
00:32:25
Speaker
without having to like jump in and be like, uh, I've only ever grown, you know, 15 tomato plants, but I just put out a thousand and I have no tractor. And I, you know, no market, no market. You have to have a tractor, no storage space, no storage. I don't have a cooler. I don't have. So there's spend some time doing that research. And if you're the kind of person who wants to do something, um, remind yourself that that research is something. Uh, and then, you know, if you just need to put some seeds out, put out some cover crop or
00:32:54
Speaker
make connections with your neighbor who has a nice tiller if you're going to till or where are you going to get your compost from if you're going to do no till. A lot of that can be done in the first year or so and then you just kind of save in order to move forward in year two and year three.
00:33:13
Speaker
Pivot, if it's not working for you, I think a lot of farmers, I've said this before, are not doing what they were doing in even year three. They're not doing in year five because they're fine-tuning it based on their market, based on what they enjoy doing. As Brett always reminds me, this is about also the joy of growing. I'm grateful for him for reminding me.
00:33:36
Speaker
That guy sounds like... God, he's so annoying. But what you enjoy doing and what you enjoy growing, so just kind of give yourself a little bit of freedom to do that. But with the business plan in place and those people at KCard that we've talked to, you can be doing something without actually putting pedal to the metal.
00:34:00
Speaker
Sometimes it's better to just dip your toe in rather than jump in not knowing how deep the water is. And that's hard to do. It's hard to throttle back. And I've seen scenarios in both kind of folks that I have jumped in.
00:34:14
Speaker
and survived and did okay and those that did that and they had such a bad experience that they did not continue with whatever they were doing in farming or producing whatever and that's a kind of a sad scenario you know money was lost and some stress was developed and that's what we're trying to avoid is making smart decisions, smart moves and that's kind of what it's all about.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah, just real briefly before we get back to some of the other stuff with the biz quiz, something Alexis was talking about where she said it's a casual thing to her now because of her experience. But that idea of talking to your potential customers and markets, I think that's one of the more like it sounds really straightforward and simple. And in many ways it is.
00:35:07
Speaker
but it's something that people don't often don't do. And so they will build things based on an assumption that a market is going to be there. Like an example would be, oh, there's all these local breweries. So I know there's going to be a demand for hops. So I'm just going to grow hops. And then when I have the hops, I'll call the breweries and let them know. Well, you talk to the breweries and you realize actually they have very little use for fresh hops. And if you're not able to,
00:35:32
Speaker
dry them and pelletize them or turn them into cakes and market them at a significantly competitive price with the Yakima Valley, which has a competitive advantage on growing the things in the first place in economies of scale, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Turns out it's really, really challenging to market hops. Even though they grow like weeds and there are a lot of local breweries, the assumption that the market will be there can be a, I mean, it can be a really devastating thing. Similar kind of thing with the
00:36:01
Speaker
Apples. Oh, I have apples. I assume I can just take them to a cidery and have them turn it into cider and sell it to people. I don't know why all my examples are booze. Maybe it's the holiday season. It's a holiday season. Really strong thing. But in reality, a lot of the high-end cideries are using non-dessert apples. So they're using cider-specific apples. And the ones that are using regular dessert apples, like an eating apple, they may do that once a year. It's not really a reliable thing.
00:36:29
Speaker
In other words, you have these leaps of logic between perceiving something happening in the world, and there must be a market for this. And sometimes there is. Sometimes it is. There are opportunities. And the naysayers, like me, who are just trying to help people avoid heartache, can shut conversations down too early. And so don't take for granted that the local brewery won't buy your hops, but you got to go talk to them and make sure that they will.
00:36:57
Speaker
figure that out as part of that conversation. That's just the setting up the markets thing that was mentioned in the biz quiz and Alexis mentioned it, I just wanted to touch on. So Josh, I'm kind of curious, any other insights or things that jumped out or that you wanted to share from the data? Yeah, something that stood out to me as I was starting to put it together is that, and I mean, with a lot of data analysis, it's like,
00:37:22
Speaker
And the answer comes to you and you're like, oh well, duh, I guess. Like I said, I noticed this. But one of the things that stood out to me as I was putting it together is that most people, the overwhelming majority, and by that I mean, let's see, about 50, 70, about 90% of the responses, access to land, access to at least one acre wasn't a problem.
00:37:53
Speaker
Like land access not being a significant obstacle in engaging in horticultural production. That's good because without that may be severely limited. Right.
00:38:07
Speaker
You know, and I remember seeing some of the groups are really tiny, like people who, you know, they have less than an acre to work with and not much labor, but they have plenty of money. That's less than a half percent of the answers fit into that kind of category. Yeah. It makes me wonder too. So we, you know, I think to give some context to what you're saying, I think with groups like the Young Farmers Coalition and anybody thinking about transition and sustainable agriculture,
00:38:37
Speaker
Access to land if you don't have it in your family is a major, major issue for a lot of those groups. Big time. But I've always kind of wondered, because a lot of those movements, conversations, all of that, it happens at a national level and it happens in places where the land market is frankly more competitive than it is in the state of Kentucky.
00:38:59
Speaker
And so I don't know if we are on one end of that, based on these data, it seems like we're at one end of a spectrum as compared to somebody trying to purchase something in the Central Valley, California, or somebody trying to maybe get some good flat non-flooding land in Florida or something.
00:39:19
Speaker
Right.
Insights on Land Access
00:39:20
Speaker
I don't know that is interesting. Yeah, it's and I mean, you know, the responses are people who are interested in engaging in horticultural production, like they already have that going for them. So they're probably going to be people who are at least somewhat associated or connected to agricultural production in some way. And one acre is
00:39:56
Speaker
so much to say that the average farm size is I think globally somewhere around two acres. Our average large farm size in the US or even in Kentucky are not necessarily representative of farms in general, that a lot of these crops can be grown.
00:40:01
Speaker
not very much.
00:40:21
Speaker
Kentucky's considered small, one of the small farm capital states, and it's like 140, I think, is the new average. Currently, it's like 160, and US is around 500 acres. I understand. We're talking about horticulture here. Obviously, it's the Hort Biz Quiz and stuff like that. But
00:40:40
Speaker
What is the average of horticulture farms? I think obviously in California and Florida and places like that, you are dealing with hundreds of acres of cabbages and all those kinds of things.
00:40:56
Speaker
The thing about horticulture that's amazing to me, I've never been able to get at that, and that's an awesome question, Alexis, is that even in hort, you have to break it down per crop. What's the average size of strawberry farm? What's the average size of tomato farm? It's so specialized, you can't just look at it as a monoculture like corn. What's the average field corn field or whatever? It's so intensive too. That's the other thing to keep in mind that you can make the same amount of money
00:41:22
Speaker
I'm just spitting right now just but you can make a lot of money off an acre of tomatoes that you take 10 acres of corn to do you know there's again the economy a scale all that kind of thing and there's a lot more labor involved but
00:41:37
Speaker
but there's also like five acres of greenhouse production. Right. But, and then also thinking about what, what you're going back to what your market is today for some reason, like markets have just been hitting me from like all different sides and different conversations. But you know, what is your market? If you want, if you want to do wholesale and go back to, okay, this is what it told me I should grow based on,
00:42:03
Speaker
you know, what I have access to, I'm gonna grow watermelons.
00:42:08
Speaker
do you want to grow watermelons for Walmart or do you want to grow watermelons for the farmers market? And what is your personality as far as how many people you want to talk to? What do you enjoy doing? Do you work a full-time job? There's so many social aspects that I think come into that. And then deciding, OK, I'd rather do wholesale. So an acre of watermelons might not cut it if you're going to do large-scale wholesale. And so that also, I think, comes into play.
00:42:35
Speaker
not to add all those millions of things up, but that's the purpose of the Hort Biz Quiz. It's kind of getting you to some point so that it makes it easier to have those other conversations about your market and your personal needs and wants. That's an important thing. We had talked about it earlier that the recommendations or the
00:42:53
Speaker
the recommendations to engage in or avoid aren't necessarily written in stone and that it's just teaching or you know advising you to a potential grower to consider what might be a struggle like what might be something they have to plan around you know if you really have your heart set on something that has a labor intensive harvest then is a you pick or ag tourism angle a way to get into it.
00:43:21
Speaker
Right. Like it's just encouraging you to think this is going to be an obstacle for you. So you have to figure out a way around it. Yeah, it's more of, I like that. I like the word encouragement, Josh, cause it just like points out where you could have some problems and like things to work on, you know, ahead of time.
00:43:37
Speaker
I love that word. When I started flower farming, before I was really flower farming, I was doing just florist work. The beauty of florist work is that you get paid before you do the work. You don't have any really inputs. Yeah, when you get started, you may have to buy some vases and stuff, but a lot of that, you can charge that person. Then ghost them.
00:44:08
Speaker
It wasn't in the biz quiz, ghosting. Ghosting was not in the biz quiz. But what it did was it paid for itself. Everything I put in, it was already paid for instantly. It's almost like a CSA. Exactly, like a CSA. You're able to have that money, save that money to put towards something else. Now, I was working another job. I had privileges in that way.
00:44:32
Speaker
something along those lines, like a CSA. Now, granted, don't go around a CSA if you've never grown a tomato before for the love of God. High operational and operational and production and marketing complexity is why. Yeah, that's all the complexities. Yeah. We, we, you know what, we should do a whole episode on just like CSA's. Have we done that yet? And just like the complexities of CSA's. That'd be good. We'd be coming up on signup season too.
00:44:56
Speaker
Yeah, they they're phenomenal and awesome. Um, but they like, we should just do a pros and cons of CSA's like, I'm a CSA member. Yep. Well, and just fleshing out anymore, uh, look at biz quiz, what it's doing to us. It's even my stimulating conversation here on this podcast, but, uh, even what, what is a CSA because there's so many different.
00:45:17
Speaker
Can i ask a question yeah i'm i used to think i knew what a csa was but there's so many i mean the spirit is there but that the letter. The specifics of csa's are so different now and we got a podcast on them.
00:45:33
Speaker
We've got some connections with the National CSA Innovation Network, and I think they have a relatively new executive director that I don't know why I said I think. I just met her at a conference. And so maybe we can see if she would want to join us maybe to talk about CSA as a champion. I would be interested in that. Love it, love it. For selfish reasons. Anything else, I mean, if we haven't convinced you yet to go take the biz quiz, if you're not sure if you're looking into
00:46:01
Speaker
having a horticulture business of some kind. I just have a question for Brett and Josh real quick.
00:46:06
Speaker
Alexis and I may have a different perspective because obviously people in front of us when they're, if they're taking it and we know that they've taken it and we're working with them. But you guys, as you're working with agents, mostly it sounds like Brett and Josh, what's the next step beyond once you get some information from biz quiz? I mean, like, is there a logical next tool or next publication or next thing that you usually step agents into or step producers into beyond biz quiz?
00:46:33
Speaker
Yes. So I think one of the things that we have that we talked about on that very first episode and we used it as a structure there, but it's this what to think about before you plant.
Next Steps After the Quiz
00:46:43
Speaker
And it's to Alexis's point about how in some cases, you do in fact get paid before you even do the thing. And a lot of farming stuff, if you don't have the relationships set up and you haven't figured out what the markets are gonna look like, you are literally putting something in the ground with the hope, I guess, that it will sell somewhere.
00:47:04
Speaker
And so the ideal situation is you have something sold before you even put it in the ground and all you got to do is make sure it gets from a seed to product and get it out there and go. Not always exactly possible but projections and planning and all that kind of stuff is good. So that's one publication we always recommend going to immediately after that.
00:47:24
Speaker
If there are crops that are suggested to you by your output, you can go and check out the crop profiles from the Center for Crop Diversification. You can also just go and look for, if any of those strike your fancy, or if you're able to see maybe a pattern. So for instance, if the recommendation that comes out to you is watermelons and winter squash,
00:47:48
Speaker
Well, you might also check out things like cantaloupe or things like other types of melons or other types of, you know, expansive cucurbits of some sort that have a bulk harvest season that's pretty short.
00:48:01
Speaker
but go and explore those different crop profiles. It doesn't have to be just the center for crop diversification. There's other things within extension, both in the horticulture department at UK, but also in other horticulture departments and places like that. That's another place to, I think, go and explore afterward. I think in general, to me, the crop selection is important, but I know we've hammered it, but the marketing and market stuff is where we see people struggle the most because we happen to have a climate that
00:48:31
Speaker
Yes, we have some disease pressure and weeds love it here. But in general, it's a pretty good place to grow stuff. And so you're likely going to be able to figure out how to grow it. Marketing, it is the thing that people really, really struggle with. And so that's just that thing I would spend some time on there. And then reach out to your county agent. I mean, it's in the BizQuiz output. It really is a great reference. I mean, it really is a great resource that's available to you.
00:49:01
Speaker
But I mean, those are the, as far as to the producers. But I think to your point too, Ray, and this is something maybe Josh, you have some thoughts on this too. It tells us a little bit about what types of resources we need to be thinking about developing, trainings or guides or future publications.
00:49:21
Speaker
If land access isn't overly an issue for a lot of our horticulture producers, but labor and capital are, or capital is, then that means we need to be thinking about developing things either about borrowing, because if you need to borrow money to start, that might be the thing you need to do. And the other thing is, how can we think about low capital intensive approaches to make maybe a larger variety of crops available or something like that, or even work at a state level
00:49:50
Speaker
with some of our ag development, Kentucky office of ag policy and other people to think about targeting funds and pools of availability, or if those funds are available, maybe better, uh, advertising them out to people to make sure they're aware of low, of low rate interest, low interest rate loans and or grants.
00:50:12
Speaker
But yeah, I don't know, Josh, did you have anything that like the, as far as future programming, your, your creative, a creative type, uh, any bike? I mean, it definitely kind of like what you touched on about letting this kind of be a guide or some of these responses, letting, letting them guide how, where to prioritize, uh, programming, you know, to see that, Oh, well.
00:50:38
Speaker
a large portion of the population or people who are interested in engaging in horticultural production, here are some crops that fit with them like say cauliflower or broccoli or something like that to understand that those are, we should make sure that those resources are kept updated.
00:50:58
Speaker
And to let that just kind of guide how we direct our, so we can reach, you know, the most amount of people kind of where they're at. Rather than getting, you know, two into certain like niche guides or something. And it definitely, like for a specific example is, you know, somebody's going to get into fruit tree production.
00:51:21
Speaker
If land access isn't really what the limiting factor is, is it as important to go into kind of like highly technical kind of trellis dwarf systems or is standard more appropriate, those kind of things. But I think we're just in our early stages of kind of letting this feedback kind of come in our direction and think about how we can structure programming.
00:51:48
Speaker
Huge shout out to you, Josh, for doing a lot of the work to make the information useful. This is happening to me over and over again where we start things and don't really realize the full potential and you've definitely made it into something that's much more strategically informative. So big shout out to fellow bald boy, Josh.
00:52:09
Speaker
Thanks. I just like spreadsheets. What a nerd. Man, some of the maps that you did in that report. Oh, maybe we could just plug real quick. There will be a couple of publications with some of these data coming out in this spring. Yes. So you can take a look and just kind of see. It's really interesting stuff.
00:52:33
Speaker
it helps you to contextualize and we can put in some, I think add in some of the stuff we've talked about today specifically saying like maybe even including what types of crops are recommended for each of the categories. So you don't have to just go through and get your answer. You can see the cheat sheet for all of them. But yeah, I do have that cheat sheet in front of me, but it's not, yeah, it'd be a good addition to the publication. Yeah. Awesome. I don't have anything else. I think that was, I'm excited about this tool.
00:53:03
Speaker
It's just fun to play with. Sometimes I'm just like, I wonder what I get today. As agents, it's a, it's really a good support making, you know, the entire CCD site, the crop diversification site and all the mini resources, but specifically tools like this, as we work with newer producers or producers that are undertaking new enterprises. We hope it's just the beginning. We hope it's just the beginning.
00:53:28
Speaker
All right, everyone. Well, we will close out here. If you've got any questions, thoughts, future episode ideas, you want to tell us how awesome we are. You can leave us a review for one. If you want to tell us how awesome you are, that would be great. Helps other people find us.
00:53:43
Speaker
if you want i have ideas have questions we got some people be like hey i need to play my onions is that is it a good time to do that you know we've gotten those emails that's perfectly fine you can shoot us one at hort culture podcast at l dot uky dot edu you can also follow along with us shoot us a message whatever you prefer on instagram
00:54:07
Speaker
Hort culture podcast is our handle on there And so we'd love to hear from you guys and we appreciate you being here with us today And we hope that as we grow this podcast you will grow with us, and we hope you'll join us next week. Have a good one