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To Grow or Not to Grow? Using the PRIMER Publication to Help With Choosing Profitable Horticulture Crops!
239 Plays3 years ago
If you're thinking about growing horticulture crops for profit, you might be wondering how to choose the best ones for your situation. In this episode, we'll talk about some factors to consider before you start planting, such as market demand, production costs, climate suitability and pest management. We'll also introduce you to a handy tool called PRIMER that can help you evaluate different crops and make informed decisions. PRIMER stands for Profitability, Resources, Information, Marketing, Enthusiasm and Risk. Tune in to learn more about how to use PRIMER and grow your horticulture business!
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Hort Culture Podcast
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.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Alexis here. They keep letting me do the intros because I guess I just have this beautiful voice, not as beautiful as my co-stars here, Brett Wolf and Ray Tackett and Josh Knight.
Understanding Horticulture Primer
00:00:31
Speaker
And so I've got these wonderful gentlemen with me here today and we are going to talk about Primer. Brett, lead us in. Lead us into Primer.
00:00:39
Speaker
Yeah, so our general discussion here, we're going to talk about one of our publications we have available at the University of Kentucky, which is this primer or primer depending on who says it pub. But it's this broader question, the number one, number one question that I am most frequently asked and probably the number one question that I give the most disappointing answer to.
00:01:00
Speaker
is, so you know, what should I grow to like, make a bunch of money, you know? Like, what's the, what's the crop? Like, give me like a, like a top 10 list would be fine. Like, I want to quit my job. Yeah. Like, what's the, give me that silver bullet. I want to know that. Yeah. There you go. Now I've just been asked it again. Yeah. Is there an answer for that? That's what I was hoping. I've been guarding the answer to share with you all today. No. The definitive answer.
00:01:26
Speaker
And before we jump into the discussion of it, I know we all have a lot to say about it because it is an important point. When I'm thinking about this question, evaluating a new crop, whether or not you want to grow it, whether or not you think you can or you know that you can sell it, whether you know you can make money while selling it, all of these are different considerations. Before we even think about that, if you are not trying to make money,
00:01:50
Speaker
If you just got your 10 acre farm as part of your retirement plan and you worked for a long time and now you're ready to play for the rest of your days and you want to grow stuff, go off. Don't come to me and say, what should I grow? I would say follow your heart. Enthusiasm. If you have ideas about stuff you want to grow or we have resources that can help with that or you talk to your extension agent or you go, whatever, explore, explore. But if you come to me, come to us and you ask this question of,
00:02:18
Speaker
what should we grow? We're thinking about trying to have a farm business. We're trying to make some money while doing it. Hopefully that's part of a business typically.
Decoding PRIMER: Key Factors in Horticulture
00:02:29
Speaker
What should I grow? So that's where we are. That's where we're starting with this consideration. And Ray, I know that you had queued up that publication we have. It's several years old now from the University of Kentucky, but I think
00:02:43
Speaker
It's not the only way to think about this, but it does. So the primer PRIMER is an acronym. And what are those P's, R's and all the other ones stand for?
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, we all try to break this question down into bite-size kind of concepts and be more structured about the way that we think about whether you're a completely new operation, looking for something new to get into and to grow for profit, or whether you're an existing operation and you want to diversify. This was an older publication that I still use a lot, but P-R-I-N-E-R, primer,
00:03:20
Speaker
stands for, I'll break it down here just into the different ways that we break the sections down, profitability, resources, information, marketing, how much enthusiasm you have for a particular practice, and the risk involved of taking on a new practice. So that's sort of the way that we
00:03:38
Speaker
Begin to think about as far as new enterprises getting into new enterprises and there's other ways to do that And there's some other tools that we talked about on a earlier episode But this is just one of the tools that we use and of course the first is my very favorite especially for commercial producers and that's that's profitability and I think that's that's where I usually start with first if it's an existing operation and they say listen We're trying to you know
00:04:06
Speaker
become even more financially sound so what do we have to do we're thinking about growing this or growing that so that's why profitability is first and foremost on this list and that's usually where I start because that's the first question that I ask that person or I think I asked myself in my mind whether it's phone call or in office visit is what's the revenue potential of whatever their ideal is. I start with that discussion with folks.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, and just to be clear, the primer publication is sort of like an OG Buzzfeed quiz. You answer questions, you score yourself, and it's all analog, so it probably is coming its way back as far as hypnosis goes. It's the analog version. You may have to print the thing. I apologize. Buzzfeed or for those of us a little bit older than Buzzfeed, the questions in the back of the...
00:04:57
Speaker
Cosmo magazines worksheet tells you about yourself. It'll tell you about your profitable. Hey guys, I still don't know personal attack on me because I like to check boxes with a number two lead pencil. Thank you guys very much. I don't want to take a test. You sharpen it with your outfit. Do you like? Yes, I do. I do. Make sure to bubble in completely. Make sure to bubble in completely.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah. And so the idea is here that you would go through that publication and you would answer questions about a given crop that you're thinking about. And so like for profitability as an example, you know, we won't have to go through the whole list. But Ray, what are a couple of the questions on for profitability? The first one, if you're using this document is does the enterprise literally have promised to deliver large enough revenue relative
Marketing Unique Horticulture Products
00:05:41
Speaker
to the investment required? And I love this sort of a two part thing.
00:05:45
Speaker
yes there's revenue but you have to look in and some of you guys you know on the podcast today. You guys are very very much better at this than i am but it's not only what revenue can generate the what sort of investment are you gonna have to put into that to get that revenue out some big discussion points does kind of a good jumping off point for people. And i would say what what makes this discussion particularly challenging. For us as we have people come in is that.
00:06:14
Speaker
often they have jumped into producing things that they get joy from producing. They like doing it. It's fun. And then the fun gets to a point where they start to have that side hustle itch or they start to have that let's commercialize this feeling. And they're then trying to make a business based on what they're already doing.
00:06:41
Speaker
And in some cases, there is a market for that. In some cases, lots of cases, there might not be a market for that in their immediate vicinity. Is that something you all experience? Am I talking out in my head? Brett called me out directly on that. I'm talking about you, Alexis. Alexis. You're the problem at you.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yes, that I would say people tend to, you know, on a small scale, sometimes it can be easy and fun to grow one thing. Again, I'm calling myself out on this directly. And then when you increase in size and you need to do that sometimes to market and to have enough product available, a lot of things change in your investment and where you're getting selling this product. And it's a big game changer.
00:07:31
Speaker
I know profitability, and I love the second question here, I'm not gonna go down the list, but it's one of my absolute favorite questions in this, and I know Alexis, you've personally dealt with this, and some of you guys on the cast today may have dealt with it also, but is, can I build in a special factor or something special to make a product unique? That also has to do with profitability, and it's one that I kinda go over with folks. Let's say they're wanting to grow a tomato, but there's 10 tomato farms that are very well established.
00:08:00
Speaker
around locally, well then I start to ask them, are you interested in maybe salsa or maybe an heirloom tomato? What can you do that's different from the people that's around you?
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah, a unique product. That's a factor of profitability. It also bleeds into marketing just a little bit. But yeah, that's a great question. I love that. What kind of product can you deliver that's unique and that is not so easily copied by others? And it does matter in horticulture because we do a lot of the marketing ourselves. It's a great question.
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that the advantage of going through something like this or having a discussion with your agent or just in general sitting down and planning and sketching things out before you do them is that you can identify products for which there already is a market. So if people already want something, it's very easy to sell that to them. If you're trying to convince people to buy something that they don't necessarily already want or they don't already know what it is,
00:09:03
Speaker
you're talking about considerably more effort on the marketing side. And so this is something I get invited out. If you listen to our last episode about soils, you know that these fine folks really love plants and know a whole lot more about them and soil than I do. I get invited out to talk to folks about marketing.
00:09:22
Speaker
And I get calls sometimes, I have a truckload full of yellow squash, do you know where I can take them to sell? And in general, that putting that cart before that horse can lead to some big losses. And so in general with this evaluating a crop, yes, we do want to think about some of the components of whether or not we can grow it.
00:09:43
Speaker
But in general, if other people have grown something, you could probably figure out how to grow it. And if they've grown it here, you can probably figure out how to grow it here. But we're really thinking and talking more about that marketing assessment and whether or not people already want a product
Market Readiness and Consumer Education
00:09:59
Speaker
or not. The marketing is so important.
00:10:01
Speaker
And a few, well, actually, it's not a few years ago. Several years ago, I got into growing, like, just personally, shiitake mushrooms. And it was on the leading edge of that. They were sort of new to the state. And boy, I was selling them at a great price, like a third of the price you could get the, over what you could get them for, the local supermarket. But people had lots of questions. They said, where in the woods did you cut these and is it gonna poison me? And it goes back to that, it was an unknown, it was sort of an unknown crop.
00:10:29
Speaker
But I grew them. It was a select spawn. I actually grew them in a controlled environment and had this product, this mushroom that I was trying to sell. That was a wonderful product. But the problem there was it was an unknown product. So there was some friction there in getting that out. Now, later on, years went by and local folks started growing those and they became an own quantity and it became much easier to sell those. And that in turn affected the profitability. Nothing changed except for the marketing.
00:10:59
Speaker
People became aware of what the product was and it became actually profitable over time to do that. And that was a marketing angle. Yeah, that's a great point. My favorite example of this is it's in Kentucky, at least it's a lot easier to sell an ear of sweet corn than Cole Robbie. And if you just ask what's Cole Robbie, you have proven my point.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny looking sweet corn. No. Cole Robert is my father. Please call me Cole Robert. Something I like about the the primer or primer that it brings up in multiple sections, but definitely profitability is kind of the
00:11:37
Speaker
the calendar time nature of profitability, you know, with some of these enterprises, you might not be able to turn a profit because your money is essentially locked up in this production system for more than a year. And this helps you kind of work through that. And I think that's a really key thing that sometimes can be lost, you know, like you can say, hey, growing Christmas trees is profitable, but it's not going to be for the first three years. So had something to worry about.
00:12:06
Speaker
And that, that to me is almost like an upfront cost. If you're growing grapes or Christmas trees, these long-term crops that have known farther out profitability statements that you have to wait longer to make money on those. You have to be prepared for that. That kind of bleeds into financing and some other issues, but yeah, yeah, another great point. And Ray, something you touched on, um, was the,
00:12:28
Speaker
It's not just, not just all about revenue. It's not just about income. It's also about investments, about costs. It's about other considerations too. And so Josh, I wonder if you might talk a little bit about, we have another tool in addition to the primer and some other publications. We also have this tool that we make available through our center for crop diversification. And Josh has been digging into some of the background information about it. So I thought maybe you talk about that biz quiz a little bit and what the stuff is that it talks about.
00:12:56
Speaker
Sure. So at the CCD website, we have a little five minute quiz that any perspective or someone who's thinking about growing a horticultural crop can take this little quiz and answer some basic questions about
00:13:11
Speaker
you know, what is their access to capital or to money to invest into this, their access to land, how much space do they have to kind of dedicate to a horticulture enterprise, and their access to labor beyond or above what they can themselves provide. And depending on their answer to those three questions, it kind of develops a little mini profile, like one of eight different categories that you fall into, and it'll give
00:13:40
Speaker
crops that you might consider that fit well with your circumstances and crops that you might want to avoid based on your answers to those questions. So for instance, if I don't have any labor, I probably don't want to think about 10 acres of tomatoes.
00:13:56
Speaker
right that could be rough as an exam not unless you want to have a tomato throwing contest or something on site yeah and get the mechanical harvesters out and make us some hines tomatoes also yeah there you go we're kind of already uh into the next point which is resources we we've started talking about that already because one one topic in this you'll find leads to the other when you're considering new enterprises
00:14:22
Speaker
But I've worked with folks that maybe wanted to do something low input with something like peaches. And I have this big discussion with them, is the enterprise adaptable under your objectives for this area? But
Resource Adaptation and Equipment Use
00:14:37
Speaker
that sort of leads us into kind of the resources that you have to know a little bit about the crop that you're growing and the adaptability of that crop. We've already talked about this a little bit.
00:14:47
Speaker
But that sort of leads us into the resource section of the discussion that has to be adaptable to the area.
00:14:55
Speaker
Alexis, do you all have anything that people typically want to grow that you have to break it to them that it doesn't grow around here too good? The laugh. I get the one that just came up was roses. So roses, they don't love Kentucky humidity and they are loved by Japanese beetles, which we have bad. Those are two things I have in common with roses.
00:15:23
Speaker
Um, and so we cannot grow them like Oregon, uh, or someplace like that can. But one, one thing that when I was thinking about it and thinking about, you know, these resources is not only, you know, your research, like you are your own resource, right? Your brain, what you can hold, what you can learn, and as well as like equipment. And one of the questions is highly specialized resources that you might have. So,
00:15:48
Speaker
Going back to the crop that we we didn't used to be able to grow Turmeric and ginger in the state of Kentucky because it needs a long season a long warm season It's a tropical plant but with the growth of the high tunnel industry Here in Kentucky and we have lots and lots that is a specialized resource that can be used now to grow those and so I
00:16:12
Speaker
You know if you have your heart set on something and you can make it profitable like marketing wise you kind of you have a market for them already which i think. Happens you know with a lot of horticulture crops where you can reach out to a chef or something like that but anyways if you can.
00:16:30
Speaker
You can go and find some, there are resources available. It's just like how much money you have to put into them as well as like how limited they are. That's a good point, Alexis. Love it. A lot of these pieces of equipment for certain crops are so specialized that you can only use like a tomato grading table for one purpose on the farm. It's not like a piece of generalized tillage equipment that can be used broad spectrum.
00:16:56
Speaker
some of these things are so specialized, they're single use scenarios. And you also need to be very aware of that because it ties up monetary resources for the purchase of certain pieces of equipment. So you really have to have a good handle on, I mean, resources from a practical standpoint of what it's going to take to bring a certain crop. Like Alexis is going to grow roses, I think she said. She didn't say that, I did. But if she were going to grow a certain crop, what equipment is going to take and how specialized is that equipment going to be?
00:17:26
Speaker
Something I noticed in the primer that I thought was really interesting in this resources section is how they invite the user to consider their availability of labor throughout the year because that can change. I mean, there's benefits, right? If you can offer year-round labor,
00:17:43
Speaker
Two workers that can entice them to stick around and make something more resilient but at the same time you might also have some workers or maybe even yourself. That can't work on your farm enterprise certain times of the year great point two things you need to know about josh is very in the maps and he's very in the seasonal considerations. It's true we're not this is not a.
00:18:11
Speaker
automobile manufacturing plant that is closed in and can be started up and started. We're relying on natural processes. We're relying on seasonal shifts. And I think that's one of those key things. And you talked about it with the income stream from... Yeah, from profitability. He said the L word, labor.
00:18:30
Speaker
But yeah, you have to keep that labor busy in the off season. And we have some enterprises that I work with or some farming operations that I work with. They simply have some almost like break even enterprises, Josh. The only reason they have those is to provide
00:18:45
Speaker
a revenue stream to keep labor busy at certain times of the year. It took me a while to figure that out and say, hey, you could probably maximize your... They're like, no, no, no. That's one of our things we do. If we break even, that's fine. We're just keeping labor engaged. Yeah. That's it. That's a big one.
Leveraging Information and Producer Networks
00:19:06
Speaker
Moving on to, what is next on the primer? What is it? Information for those of you guys? I for information. Yeah, there you go, Alexis. I can spell. Yes, V-R-I. So we're the, I mean, the information, we could talk about information, right? Yeah. Extension publications, soil tests, budgets, cost projections, all that kind of good stuff. All the things. Yes, all the things. One thing that primer, primer, primer, whatever, kind of
00:19:36
Speaker
hits as well as like, of course, you know, find out if you can grow this cucumber and do some research. But things like the question, does market research and development appeal to me? Because some people that sounds awful. And so do you know anybody who can help you with that?
00:19:55
Speaker
Or is that something that you are willing to do anyways? Because you're gonna have to do it in some way or shape or form. And that was something different for folks, yeah. Oh, sorry, Brett, go ahead. No, just to know thyself. And I think that comes to when you're identifying whether or not you want to grow things that are labor intensive and are gonna require a lot of time out in the
00:20:16
Speaker
that hot Kentucky humidity that you talked about, Alexis. But it also comes down to when you're thinking about market channels where you might be distributing this stuff, if you are a curmudgeon and do not like interacting with people, maybe a direct marketing scenario where you're interacting with people all the time isn't going to be a good fit for you. And that affects your overall plan for all of this stuff. And so, yeah, I totally agree with that. The primers did a good job.
00:20:42
Speaker
one of the prime considerations I run into with folks Brett that's a stopping point for a lot of people they do know themselves and they're like whoa whoa whoa you know you may be working with someone that's more involved let's say traditionally with row crops and then we start talking about horticulture products and we have we've had this discussion before in an earlier episode in that you production and then there's marketing are you willing to spend as much time marketing as producing for some of these crops that may be
00:21:09
Speaker
are not as well known as sweet corn. These crops that may be new to market or new to an area, that's a stopping point for a lot of people. And that's knowing yourself, gathering the information, understanding the markets, all of the things we've been talking about, that's kind of a nexus. And it's hard to understate or overstate how important that is. And that's just a point that is a sticking point for some people. They realize that that's not what they wanna do and they don't do it. They stop there.
00:21:37
Speaker
And I would be I said earlier, you know, we're extension people. We have lots of information, but other producers have tons of information as well and getting to know and build your producer network, being able to have some conversations and share best practices. I think in general, a lot of producers, especially in this weirdo oddball world of horticulture, do tend to share the information that they have available.
00:22:00
Speaker
to the extent that they can, and that's another source of information. And trust yourself, your own experience, your own background. Alexis talked about you being your own resource. You have a lot of information, so don't always think that you have to go looking elsewhere, but yeah, I think that, I just wanted to make sure. Join organizations, because that'll be, it'll help you find other people who are growing similar things, help you with mentorships. I would say as somebody who has grown, and I think everybody would agree with me,
00:22:30
Speaker
That would be my first step recommendation before just like finding the guy 10 miles down the road or guy or gal 10 miles down the road and calling them up. And it's not to that you shouldn't call them and maybe create a relationship with them. And maybe you can partner on, you know, labor or, you know, other resources, but remember they're super busy and time is money and all businesses. So by joining that organization, you can find some of those answers and
00:22:58
Speaker
in a similar way, I guess. I don't know how to say that without being mean. And for those of you guys that are on campus, Brett, Josh, and I know you've worked extensively in these areas, but one of the points is, is there even information available on that certain
00:23:14
Speaker
It may be a great idea, but there may be almost no information available. I think of lavender when I think of it when that came to Kentucky and folks were looking around for info. Do you guys run into that a lot? People ask you, do you have information on this crop? I mean, how do you handle that? That's a tough one. I mean, there's only so much you can do if no applicable information is available. I mean, what do you do?
00:23:39
Speaker
If we don't have a publication for it and it's something that can be produced in Kentucky or close, I mean, the season extension thing has changed the capacity of this, the growers in this state that, you know, they can grow more things like was mentioned with the ginger and turmeric. But, uh, I start looking at other states extension services first and see what I can find online. Yeah. We're part of a national system, aren't we? It's not just, we, we mentioned Kentucky every now and again, we're here, you know, we're,
00:24:08
Speaker
physically around the central part of Kentucky, all of us are, but the Cooperative Extension Service is a national system. Good point. Hot tip for the listeners out there. When you go into your Google search, if you type whatever it is that you're searching for, and then at the end of that, you type site
00:24:30
Speaker
colon dot edu. So that's s i t e the colon punctuation dot edu. No spaces between them. It will show you results only from email or from URLs that end in dot edu. In other words, it will only show you university results. It won't show you the mother news home garden herbal t dot com results. It will just show you the
00:25:00
Speaker
extension results and other university results. Not to say that there aren't great resources that aren't university, but it is a good way to filter out and find some of that stuff. We do, as far as Ray about the oddball stuff, you know, we already are, horticulture itself is already in some ways in this part of the country and an oddball. We say that with pride. Yeah, group with lots of different variations on even just within cut flowers. I think of all of the different growing techniques required for different types of cut flowers. And that's just
00:25:28
Speaker
what other people consider one thing and then talk about all the different perennials and annuals and all that kind of stuff but we do our best to offer publications and resources and we do take requests however there are certain times where it's just gonna be.
00:25:45
Speaker
a struggle to find that information and all you can do is your best due diligence to try and find it and then decide whether or not, I think skipping ahead to the end of primer here, the R of risk, that would be going into something without information would be a risk.
00:26:05
Speaker
That's how we think about, okay, there's information available. And it has to do with the numbers of people asking. And if we have a multiple requests about a certain thing, Lavender is an example of that. We have a Lavender publication now because of that. Alexis, did you have something to add?
00:26:21
Speaker
I had a very simple thought, but it was the site.edu, that actually was new to me. The reason why I've been using this is put in what you want to type. If you want to know about blueberries, put blueberries and then put CES, which is Cooperative Extension Service. The only reason I would say that's another option is because one,
00:26:43
Speaker
to me, it's easy to remember. And two, you sometimes with EDU will pull up research publications and not to say you shouldn't be looking those up, but sometimes they're so- Different audience. Yeah, it's different audience. Very, very specific on
00:26:59
Speaker
some weird microbe and a blueberry plant, right? Like something very strange. So if you put CES, what you're going to come up with is for growers and for production or even for recipes for it if you're wanting, you know, recipes. So that's just a little tip. And I use that, you know, all the time if I'm looking for a publication outside of Kentucky. CES being cooperative extension service. I do something similar. I don't quite use the .edu. I just
00:27:28
Speaker
I search for whatever I'm looking for and at the end add cooperative extension. But CES is quicker. CES is fast. Fast and fancy. I only ever Google my own name, so I'm just speaking from what I've heard. You can set up alerts for that, so when you're mentioned. Honestly, you're behind. I have them, but the old school looking it up directly feels nice. The Mr. Wolf. You want it real time.
00:27:52
Speaker
Mr. Brett Wolf, cool. See if anybody's saying that. Everybody's saying that. See what kind of traffic you're getting on your name. Sure. I'm sorry, Ray. I took us off the rails there. Where are we on? That's how we function the best. When we're off the rails, remember.
00:28:08
Speaker
It's horticulture, so we're off the rails to begin with. It's like that we're trying to find the end through the weed patch. We talked about marketing the whole time, and I know some of you guys are just so good at this. Once again, picking on you, Josh and Brett.
00:28:29
Speaker
You guys have given this a lot of thought, you teach this, you produce materials on this. But how do you guys work, specifically another question for you guys, but where do you start when folks are looking at new enterprises for their operations or they're looking at getting into farming and you walk them through marketing, how do you guys approach that? I know there's questions on Primer or Primer, but how do you guys approach it?
00:28:53
Speaker
I would say so we have another publication we call it's called what to think about before you plant.
Crafting a Marketing Strategy
00:28:59
Speaker
And it's a great one, very similar kind of information where it's it's these are the ways that these different market channels are broke down broken down. Here's the things there's a couple of tables in that publication in particular, that I think are really, really helpful for summarizing like, does this is there a high barrier of entry or cost to get into this market channel?
00:29:21
Speaker
Um, how much time is it? Is it a time intensive one? And so an example of that, a comparison of that would be if I go to a farmer's market and the farmer's market's open for eight hours and I live 30 minutes away. Well, I'm going to pack up, drive 30 minutes. That's an hour, get there, spend eight hours trying to sell, pack up, drive back home. That's a 10 hour day that I have spent as compared to if I'm growing
00:29:44
Speaker
Tomatoes, for instance, I picked them and put them in boxes and then I have either a drop off or somebody comes to my farm and picks them up. I spend 20 minutes out of my day interacting with the driver, making sure all the things are signed, everything's taken care of. Now the price per unit is different. All those considerations are very different, but that's just a way to think about that. And so I think in general,
00:30:09
Speaker
I would encourage people to put as much thought into their marketing as they do into their production, because ultimately, if you're trying to sell your product, that's the step that's going to limit whether or not you can continue to grow or not. Now, not everybody wants to do that, but the other thing I would just encourage people to think is if you're budgeting, if you are thinking ahead,
00:30:31
Speaker
consider putting money into your budget for marketing. Now, for anyone who's a marketing person, that may sound like the craziest thing you've ever heard. Of course you put money into marketing budget. I mean, if you want to compare the marketing budget for a fast food chain compared to all their other departments, I mean, they're putting tons of money into that. Producers are really, at least in my experience, are very hesitant to commit money or much money to their marketing.
00:31:01
Speaker
I think they maybe view it as a lost cost or it's something where you can't necessarily see the output of it as clearly initially. But in terms of overall sales, you are investing money in order to sell more than you were before. So you're putting some money in now to make money later. And so those would be a couple of the things I would think about with
00:31:22
Speaker
introductions to marketing and kind of getting people started thinking about it. But in general, and this is in the what to think about before you plant, and it's not always feasible, but in general, the goal should be to have products sold or realistically projected to be sold before they ever even go on the ground. And that takes some effort. No, it's possible. It's a leap of faith. But in general, that is the goal. And so
00:31:49
Speaker
Alexis, for instance, as you are planting some of the flowers and stuff that you're growing, you are thinking ahead to events in the future, right? I mean, it's not just handfuls of bulbs and corms and tubers getting thrown in all every direction and like, let's hope that you have some of those things have a target market in mind. Is that wrong? Right. Yeah. And CSAs are a great example of that as well.
00:32:18
Speaker
people pre-sell those, so they have cash flow and times that cash flow is low and then they know they have a minimum set that they need to produce for and has already been sold and then they can think about other avenues for those marketing. Looking at from marketing, I would say my biggest tip is to
00:32:44
Speaker
Really identify yourself in a way of, you know, create a logo, even if it's a simple logo of your farm name, really have something ownership that people can identify. You need to be identifiable. You know, we say this all the time and again, people who are into marketing are like, well, duh, but have something people recognize and you stick with it and it goes on everything, everything that leaves your farm.
00:33:09
Speaker
has your name on it. People want to know where that came from, whether it's wholesale or farmer's market. And I mean, I know you're not necessarily slapping a sticker on every single tomato, but if you can put that money towards special bags or you're dropping a flyer or something or a recipe card in with their bag of tomatoes and looking at grants, there are tons of grants available for marketing. That's one that
00:33:35
Speaker
I think, and they're usually pretty easy. We're in Kentucky, so I could talk about the Kentucky Proud grant opportunity where it's a cost share. You can put half the money towards it that you normally would and help get those stickers, help get that signage, help get a logo made or a website or whatever it is that look like, a radio ad.
00:33:58
Speaker
Make sure that people can find you anywhere in a crowd anywhere. I think that's like my number one thing for marketing no matter what you're selling. The way that I coronally say it is that so like for instance, let's say you say you sell blueberries.
00:34:13
Speaker
and you spend 10 cents to get a little sticker with your logo printed on it, and you stick it on the container that you sold the blueberries to those folks. Now they could take it home, and of course you make an incredible product. You grow an incredible product. This is gonna be the best blueberries that they've ever had, maybe since they were kids and everything tasted better back in the nostalgic days of yore. And now with that little 10 cent sticker, you have bought a little mini billboard inside your customer's refrigerator.
00:34:42
Speaker
That is the cheapest marketing that you are ever going to do. It's the lowest in cost of investment. Now, that assumes that your product is good. Now, if you're not good, that's that's take a step. Don't put stickers on your competitor sticker. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Alexis, that notion of like thinking about spend some time and the thing that again, it sounds silly, but like
00:35:06
Speaker
You spend a lot, people spend a lot of time doing production planning. They order all their seeds, they get all the seeds figured out when they're seeding stuff, when they're going to start stuff, what they're sowing in the ground, when transplants need to arrive, etc, etc, etc. And then they don't spend that same amount of critical, engaged time thinking through their marketing plan, thinking through what their brand is, thinking through all of those other things.
00:35:30
Speaker
And then they don't have the sales results or the marketing driven results that they're looking for and they're frustrated by that. And I would just say you do tend to get results where you spend your time.
00:35:43
Speaker
And you don't have to be amazing at any of this stuff. If you are able, if you're willing to spend some time learning, figuring it out and putting in the effort to make some plans, nothing demoralizes people quicker than producing a fantastic product. And then, you know, coming to you and say, I have 10,000 of this.
00:36:01
Speaker
where am I going to sell it and it's a perishable product and it goes to waste and next thing you know they may not be interested or even producing that whatever they were producing before. It puts a lot of people out when they were great at producing they were not so great at marketing.
00:36:16
Speaker
And if you're not good at marketing and you're not willing to spend the time, be honest with yourself about that now and either don't grow that product or invest in money or, you know, maybe your kid is good. I had this grower who hated social media, hated the branding of it all, but was a fantastic grower. Had a teenage daughter who loved Instagram.
00:36:40
Speaker
Loved facebook loved these these things in documenting he put her in charge of of his marketing and
00:36:49
Speaker
grew great because of that. He did what he was good at and she did what she was good at. Invest your time and if you can invest your time or are not willing to, be honest about it and invest your money on somebody who is good at it. I think that's- All of this is that enthusiasm factor. It's like what empowers you or gets you excited about doing what you do.
Sustaining Farming through Enthusiasm
00:37:11
Speaker
And that is part of this this tool we're talking about today is enthusiasm. Like you said, it kind of one family member was good at the other family member was good at that. And it took both. And, you know, it's OK to admit that you're not good at both or you may not be enthusiastic or or you want to do both production and marketing. That's OK. There's value in knowing that you don't want to do both or you want to do one or the other. There's value in that.
00:37:38
Speaker
You got to be, I guess to stay in something long term, you kind of usually typically maybe have to be interested in it and enthusiastic about it to a point. I mean, it depends on what kind of profits you're making, but that's important. I think a lot of people are when they, when they go into this type of work or they go into this, they're interesting exploring farming. Sometimes they're moving away from jobs that they're not enthusiastic about.
00:38:05
Speaker
And so the idea of going away from something that you're not enthusiastic about only to force yourself to do something that you are also not enthusiastic about seems, I don't know, it's a little counterproductive, you know? Yes. It's like, well, we didn't want to do a nine to five 40 hour week, so we did an 80 hour week. Not a good life choice. What was that about labor? Marketing makes my blood boil.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah, the enthusiasm, what are some of the questions, the way that they frame that in the Primer publication, right? As far as the enthusiasm, I mean, just going down the list, number one, is it something you're going to enjoy? The next, is there enough variety in production and marketing activity to keep that interesting? I mean, that's sort of nitpicking a little bit, but it's an important question. I think the last question on this little tool, at least the printed tool,
00:38:56
Speaker
Is that is this something that you can get better at with practice over time is it something you can improve that and produce more better products over time. And that probably is just a good question as any on this tool use that last question I think to it we've framed it and maybe maybe I mixed up the two but there is.
00:39:17
Speaker
being good at something, and there is liking to do something. And there are a lot of things that I like to do that I'm absolutely no good at. But you know what happens over time, I do them, I don't get mad about doing them, and I get better. And conversely, there are things that I'm really, really good at that I absolutely hate doing.
00:39:38
Speaker
They tire me out. They drain me. We just, I just went and was at a conference doing a information table, talking to people, really enjoying talking to people. It's great. Great to talk to them and interact and all that. But by about the hour, the third hour, I may be unbelievably to some, I'm an introverted person and I'm just so totally drained that if my entire job or my entire operation was built around doing that, like for instance, at a farmer's market booth,
00:40:08
Speaker
my cup is going to be so empty by the end of that that I'm not going to be able to sustain that kind of operation. And so I think, yeah, that being good at something and having interest or feeling that it's a sustainable thing that you can keep doing may be two different things. And if you're interested in learning, you're interested in getting better, then that might be more important in the long term.
00:40:26
Speaker
For Josh that loves graphs, there's got to be a juxtaposition or intersection of your interest and your abilities or skills at a certain thing. There's got to be a sweet spot, I guess is what I'm getting at. For those of you that love the visuals and graphs. Josh, is there a seasonal component to that as well?
00:40:43
Speaker
Uh, yeah. I mean, I like being outside in the spring, not so much in like July or January. Sure. Josh doesn't even know what kind of great point that is. There's so many community gardens where we work with where there's a lot of enthusiasm in April, March and April, when it starts getting pretty and there's a lot of angst and disdain and bad feelings in July. So yes, that's where it's so hot. The bugs aren't even bothering you because they're in the shade. Yes. You're the only idiot out there in the sun. You going out there.
00:41:17
Speaker
Well, I was going to say that there's another thing in the enthusiasm worksheet a little further down where it asks to, you know, list three good reasons to get into the enterprise, but then also three good reasons to get out of the enterprise. And I think that's kind of, you know, something to look at kind of over time and, you know, thinking of goals, like what, what would be a signal for you to maybe
00:41:40
Speaker
move on or change your production system to think about that before you get into it. Yeah, I think in general that was something and I think the last category is risk, which we've talked some about before already and just the notion that like different operations come with different
Evaluating Farming Operations for Growth
00:42:00
Speaker
sorts of risk. But in general, I think to maybe wrap us up here, this type of consideration as Josh is your point out is useful
00:42:10
Speaker
when you are electing or trying to figure out a new operation. But something that I have increasingly tried to talk more about with people because it seems like maybe they haven't thought about it or it didn't occur to them in the midst of all the busyness is that you can continually reevaluate. And so as you are deciding whether or not to continue with a thing,
00:42:36
Speaker
it might be that you look at the primer and you go through profitability and you're like, nope, lost all the money there. Or you look at enthusiasm and say, man, I, the flea beetles on those eggplants are so demoralizing that I don't want to do that anymore. But they're enthusiastic. Their enthusiasm, their own primer.
00:42:57
Speaker
You're marketing and you're like, man, if I have to sit at a farmer's market one more day, my face, like I will have permanent wrinkles from the fake smiles I've been doing. Like revisit all of this every, I would say every year or after every, you know, season crop. Yeah, for sure. That was a point I wrote down. Yeah. When you closed the, the, our last first episode that we did, you said,
00:43:23
Speaker
something along the lines of don't expect your operation in year three to look like your operation did in year one. And I think that's exactly to this point. And it's also if you are in that zone where you've had a really awesome hobby and you've grown it to a point of being really excited about it,
00:43:43
Speaker
that you are starting to make more than you can use, or you're starting to produce more than you can give away to friends, and you're thinking about turning it into a business, the more honestly you can evaluate the whole situation with these things that these folks have talked about, the better your chances of avoiding a lot of heartache and frustration are, I think. So those are just a couple of things that I wanted to say to wrap up. Ray, did you have anything else?
00:44:12
Speaker
No. Other than just, you know, you don't have to use a tool like this, but I find that it does help you to structure your thoughts and maybe think about things that you hadn't thought about or think about the things that are more initially
Annual Planning and Podcast Closing
00:44:26
Speaker
important. All of these things you have to consider. This is just a way to consider them more structured in a more structured way. Yeah. So if you want to find that information, you can, uh, you can check out the, if you just Google primer and university of Kentucky or use any of the variations on
00:44:42
Speaker
search tactics that we've presented during this episode to find that, uh, what to think about before you plant and the Hort biz quiz and all that kind of stuff. You can find the same, try to include those in the notes as well for the podcast, put some links up there. Yeah. Well, Alexis, do you have a wrap up for us here? I would just say, check out, you know, primer.
00:45:04
Speaker
And I mean, honestly, Brett stole mine. It was so good. He stole it right out from my brain of just, you know, don't forget to revisit this idea from year to year. Uh, and we hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and that you will check us out next time. So thanks for being with us today. Thanks everyone. Thank you.