Define a goal for yourself.
Is it extra income or are you going for a full time venture?
Create a crop budget if it's more than just for some spending money.
When u say urban farmer, I assume it's more than hobby?
If so, you want to nail down all your costs and what your expected yield times expected selling price.
Then you will be able to see just how many plants you will need, how much space, how much fertilizer etc.
You can then look at it all and say: wow, I'd need to grow X amount of plants to make X dollars at this.
I think we all get into it for the love of the growing, but gloss over the numbers along the way. I used to.
Basically you should be able to tell yourself: if I want to NET $10,000, I would need to grow X number of plants to yield X amount of pounds. And I know it costs me X amount of dollars per lb or box produced from seed to harvest.
Then you can realistically see what it will take to reach your goals and adjust up or down, as well as find ways to reduce costs/become more efficient with labor. In year 1 you will make assumptions on the labor costs (you should assign a price to your labor per hour). Your material costs should be easy to list out.
Keep track of everything and then when you make year 2's budget, you will have more realistic scenarios and be able to identify where you need to improve or adjust your level of volume/production.
|