(09-24-2021, 07:01 AM)EricC85 Wrote: How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

Everything's a little different. I think I mentioned above, almond processors will compete for you. Many of them, including the place I went with, The Almond Company, will pay for your trees when you plant if you sign an 8-10 year contract to sell to them. 

Bulk wine processors, which was my thing for my first half dozen years, are shady cartels that price-fix, and will drop you the second they can get cheaper juice from say South America or whatever. Also why I've mentioned on this board a few times, I often do better when the dollar is weaker. Really, if I could do anything I would've stayed producing wine but it's just way too monopolized. 

Raisins, I walked into a local processor when I noticed the raisin price eclipse the green price, basically a guy that knew me by family name, and I just told him I'd like to try to make raisins. Easy as that, signed yearly contracts for about 4 years with him. Also, a unique feature of Thompson Seedless grapes, you can choose to grow for table grapes, bulk wine, or raisins and kinda sorta just choose at the end of the season based on price, which of course the processors do their best to hide from you lol. 

That local raisin processor ended up out of business a few years later, and stemming from some of that stuff I moved on to SunMaid Raisins. If anyone's ever bought raisins before, you've probably seen the red box with the girl on the front. They are a little unique in that they're grower-owned. I think again I just walked in, asked if I could sell to them, they came to look at my field, looked at some of my past USDA grading and said yes. I think I sold on a year to year basis with them for 5 years and they offered me a full membership a few years ago, meaning I now have a permanent home and a (very small) part owner in the company.

Outside of my own experience, I think pistachios are a lot like almonds, processors will gladly take all you can offer them. They all incentivize things, free trees or they pay for your hauling and you probably just take the best offer, or maybe someone has a better pay structure or something like that. Tree fruits, citrus, and fresh market stuff gets a little tougher and you might need to know a guy, have a family member already producing with a processor, stuff like that. A who do you know type of thing.

Real wine grapes are the toughest of all. You will contract directly with a winery, and you'll have to offer some type of advantage over a lot 
of competition. Or start your own winery I guess. 

Anyway, that's kinda my experience with things as a small small grower but there's really no rules. You can get as gangster as you want, and people do. 

I know guys that will calculate the ROI over the 20 year life of an almond ranch, go to the biggest local business they can find and promise such and such return if you give me x amount of capitol and boom away they go with a 1000 acre ranch and the most baller Ford pickup there is. 

Some guys find good land deals, will buy the land and plant something like cherries, then turn around and sell half the interest to a cherry packer to make sure they're married in basically. Now that packer has a personal interest in selling that guys crop. 

The real big dogs do the shadiest crap and that stuff usually has to do with water deals. Selling farm water to real estate developers and stuff like that. Real dirty stuff.

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(09-24-2021, 03:16 PM)Sneakers Wrote:

(09-24-2021, 07:01 AM)EricC85 Wrote: How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

It helps to be the only U-Pick hemp farm in the county.

I started raising investors to plant hemp a few years back but quickly realized that industry was going into over supply rapidly. Chicken hearted it lol. 

Bigger and smarter guys than me lost a lot of money. There's not enough infastructure in place yet.

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