Growing Niche Crops On The Small Farm For Profit

Small farmers should raise crops and livestock for niche markets. This means relying on alternative crops and livestock, or alternative marketing, rather than the traditional types of farming the universities promote. While universities will claim that their research is size neutral, in the real world, that simply is not true.

For example, if your university or seed dealer comes up with a new variety of corn that yields an additional 10 bushels to the acre, who benefits the most? The farmer with 50 acres of corn or the farmer with 2000 acres of corn? The man growing 50 acres of corn gets a 500 bushel increase in his crop. The man with 2000 acres gets a 20,000 bushel increase, which enables him to purchase new technology at a faster rate than can be done on the 50 acre farm.

The 2000 acre farm also has a lower per unit cost of production and more acres to spread his equipment over. You might well say, I have only five acres. I cannot compete, why do it at all? Well, you can compete, but you need to raise different crops, or the same crops for different reasons. Here’s an example.

Selling corn will ordinarily bring you about $3.50 per bushel. A bushel of shelled corn is 56 pounds, so this amounts to about five cents per pound. On the other hand, so you take the same corn and add value to it by processing it into cornmeal. You will make $89 per bushel for about $80 per pound in gross profit. You will have to cover the cost of bags to put the cornmeal in, about $.25 each for a plastic lined cloth bags.

This means 56 1 pound bags would cost about $12. This $12 will have to be subtracted from the amount you make from selling the cornmeal. This leaves about $72, which will pay your labor, management, and marketing costs. A good goal is to have 50% of your income in net profit in this case, about $36 per bushel.

If each acre yields 100 bushels, selling corn at two dollars per bushel will net you $50. Selling it as cornmeal will produce a net income of about $3625 per acre-including payment for labor and management. By selling the corn as cornmeal-or growing high dollar, high-yield varieties, or selling Indian corn for decorative purposes, or any other number of alternative marketing methods-you can vastly increase your level of profit. Of course, selling 5600 bags of cornmeal will require much more marketing effort than would hauling your corn to the nearest elevator and unloading it.