design 3 : annual polyculture ESTIMATED YIELDS VERSUS RETAIL CROP VALUE (KG & EUROS) 600000 500000 400000 300000 200000 100000 Yield / ha (kg) Sales / ha (eur) mon greens (mizuna, claytonia), which are very cold tolerant, but also reputably very tasty in salads. Selecting heirloom varieties of tomatoes or root vegetables is also a possible approach for developing a unique product portfolio that caters to local tastes. ESTIMATED COSTS The costs of the hand labor required to manage and cultivate a hectare of this very-intensely cropped polyculture rotation are quite high. The labor is continuous as there is always seeding, planting, or harvesting occuring on one of the four plots. A ballpark estimate of 40.000 hours of labor per hectare is required for all of the functions described here. Once again, this number does not include the cost of inputs, insurance, energy, or other contextual costs. This amount of labor, if paid at 15 euros an hour, would amount to 600.000 euros per year in costs. ESTIMATED PROFITABILITY mache mizuna tomatoes MARKET & SALES POTENTIAL Common products Most of the products here are common vegetables and greens with well established markets. One advantage of this system is that it produces these crops much earlier and later in the season than can normally be achieved. In those parts of the season, the prices for onions carrots spinach zucchini head lettuce bok choy arugula these crops will likely be higher than what is anticipated in these projections. Specialty products One of the key ways to gain additional benefit from this production approach is to choose crop cultivars that are not typically available in supermarkets. In this design, we have included some less comIf all of the crops produced in this system are successfully sold, then the profits can be quite high, even despite the high labor costs. Based on retail prices, the overall value of the crops produced in this system is around 2,4 million euros. Even considering high labor costs, a high marketing expense, and a significant amount of additional costs, the potential for a profitable outcome if sales at retail prices are successfully achieved remains very high. Pagina 54
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