Business gurus I need your help! My husband and I want to start an organic farm. We, like many, don’t have enough money to get a substantial amount of property. We want to have a few head of cattle, sheep, a good amount of chickens and grow an organic garden. We’ve looked into USDA government loans and that many be a option for us, but I wanted to know what our options would be for investors. I know a handful of people who might consider investing with us, but I don’t know the slightest about the whole process.
Is this idea even an option? What type of deals would be made for investors? What could we offer them?
Any info would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Comments
What I would do is try for the loans first and/or get some small investors. They will invest money into your company/ farm and in return either get a percent of profit or get some of the organic foods free or discounted.
To me this does not sound like an invest-able business opportunity - more like a glorified back yard garden with no land. What do you bring to the equation? How much organic expertise? There are small scale organic farms in my area - people pay in advance at the beginning of the growing season ($480 for all seasons less for specific) for a produce basket which they retrieve every 2 weeks, from the farm or from a central drop location in town. While this could be income from your existing property, it doesn’t seem like enough to make a business venture if you have to buy the land. The health food stores sell organic eggs - you would have to deliver them - you get one egg a day from each chicken - they sell for $4 a doz with the store markup. You don’t get eggs during the winter unless you keep the chickens in lighted quarters. What do you plan to do with the cows and sheep?
If you already lived like this and produced your own food you might be equipped to branch out and sell the surplus, but this is a lot of varied efforts for not much return.
You might need to rent land and look at buying somewhere later. You can get some old back-lot of someones property to start with, they’ll probably just be happy to have some income off it. If it all goes wrong then you can just pay out the lease and walk away, no investors or anything to pay out. Also, we looked into this a few years ago and realised that you have to start with the instantly cropping things first e.g. tomatoes, potatoes etc to get some income in the door and sell them off to restaurants, the bigger, longer stuff you can do later. If you are renting the space it might be worth investing in some root-pruning bags that you can put trees in so you can pull them up if you move(these can be a good investment for re-sale as advanced stock later too, to residential buyers). I’d be MAJORLY advoiding buying a property as an organic farm will very rarely pay the mortgage on it, usually they are done as additional income to the main farm etc. Goodluck, but please do the maths first
