John Robb continues to sing the praises of backyard farms, citing some business numbers from a recent LA Times article:
On average, the companies charge between $900 and $2,000 to have a section of land dug up — or to build a raised bed — that’s big enough to grow enough edible plants to feed a family of four.
The companies also offer personalized planting and harvesting services. For an additional weekly fee of $20 or more, a staff member will put in the plants, pluck the weeds, amend the soil, quash the bugs and fill a basket with ripened produce.
[...]
The two-person staff at Your Backyard Farmer is so overwhelmed with maintaining their 67 mini-fields, they’re turning people away. Co-founder Donna Smith started a waiting list earlier this month for those willing to spend at least $1,675 a year to turn 400 square feet into rows of butternut squash, bok choy or kale.
The economics are questionable:
Along with fresh produce, those rewards can include the bragging rights that come with having the latest eco-conscious status symbol: a farmer to call your own.
“The reality is, in most cases, you can go to Safeway or Whole Foods and buy organic produce for less,” said Jeremy Oldfield, 27, co-founder of Freelance Farmers. “So we focus on the intangibles of this: the joy of picking a tomato in the afternoon that’s still warm from the sun, or having a dinner party and being able to point out to your guests that most of the meal came out of your backyard.”
If you enjoy gardening, or your labor is suddenly undervalued by the market — as in a recession — then raising your own produce makes more sense:
Home Depot saw its vegetable seed sales jump 30% last year and continued to have double-digit growth in January. George Ball, chief executive of W. Atlee Burpee & Co., North America’s largest home garden company, said that for the last few years the company has been selling more vegetable seeds and plants than flowers — for the first time in its 130-year history.
Again, the economics are questionable, even from the hired-farmer’s point of view:
Today the company has offices in Claremont, Pasadena and Los Angeles’ Westside, and has expanded its staff to eight. Revenue is small but growing: Farmscape pulled in about $54,000 for the first four months of this year — $22,000 more than last year.
Most of the money is being plowed back into Farmscape, Dubois said, to expand the network of 60 mini-farms they’ve built in Southern California.
A staff of eight is splitting revenue — not profit, but revenue — of $54,000? (Presumably the bulk of their annual revenue comes during the spring planting season.)
That doesn’t seem… sustainable.