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Old January 4, 2016   #51
bower
Tomatovillian™
 
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,793
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Hempel View Post
I like the music analogy. Let me take it one step further. Independent breeders are like garage bands, or unknown YouTube performers who are trying to create music. They spend considerable time and energy working on their craft, and occasionally they get paid pocket change or drinks for their efforts.

Discussing how to make money being a garage band is a frustrating exercise. Although many garage bands are creative -- the best case scenario for making money is probably limited to becoming a "cover" band and playing expensive weddings (something tangential to actually creating music).

Motivations for independent breeding are varied and I would guess money is not a top priority for most. However, I would guess that some of us do dream of creating a tomato that somehow opens doors that are typically closed. But, our chances of making money breeding are probably about as high as being the next Justin Bieber (a YouTube discovery by record execs, for those who don't know).

I don't really think there is a formula, although Travis' suggestions are reasonable.
Very funny rereading this, I realized that I actually did play a wedding this summer, with my 'garage band' F2 cherries. It was for love though, not for money. I did have the reward of being dubbed a 'tomato wizard' by the maid of honor, who 'doesn't even like tomatoes'. And actually it was a personal triumph to have ripe tasty cherries for the wedding date as I had planned to do, even in spite of the miserably cold summer we were having.

What Scott RedBaron said about multiple revenue streams makes a lot of sense to me. I don't personally have discretionary income to support the work or the material cost that goes into tomato breeding. For the past couple of years, I've been able to pay for the material cost, if not the labour, by selling some extra pepper and tomato plants, and selling some of my surplus tomatoes. Selling seeds also makes complete sense to me as a small revenue stream to help cover some of the cash expense.

What I learned this past year is that all of those revenue streams can fail for one reason or another in a bad year. Like Joseph the underlying motive for me to breed tomatoes is to develop varieties that will produce high quality fruit in our local conditions, even in a bad year. I should count myself lucky that the first year growing a lot of F2's here, also was one of those very challenging years. I got a very clear picture of the winners and losers in the worst conditions, and how much risk is involved in pursuing the less well-adapted lines, which might be great in a better year but then fail when the going gets tough.

Anyway, going forward and thinking about the season to come in 2016, I am naturally thinking, how will I recoup the costs coming up and also pay for the losses in 2015.
I would like for the project to pay for itself, at minimum.
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