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Post by templeton on Oct 7, 2014 23:42:08 GMT -5
As to how to create a craze - grow enough to give away to a celeb chef, particularly one with a TV profile. Or make up some spurious(or even better, true) health claims that are exclusive to your product, and push it hard. Black Kale seed was apparently unprocurable in Aust this winter, due to demand. Kale featured in a lot of reality TV cooking shows. We think someone bought up all the seed in Aus for a big supermarket crop. I've started cultivating my local good food chefs, and one of the organic farms that supply them and other high end restaurants. Started with free yard grown basil - I had too much, and I needed the bed space, so clipped a huge bunch and just took it in - chef was blown away by the intensity of flavour, so I took him in a bunch for the next couple of weeks. He usually has to put up with relatively flavourless hydro stuff. Whenever I have a huge excess of stuff that they might use, I take it in. They soon let me know if it is any good or not. This builds a relationship. And I get free sides on the few occasions I actually eat at their establishments. I took them some of my purple and red snow peas last month - they were blown away. If I can take them in some of my exclusive breeding lines when I've got enough seed for a crop to be grown, I'm hoping the chef will get onto the organic farmer, and ask him for my varieties - then the grower needs to come to me to get the seed. I know the people on both ends of the relationship, so its a bit easier. The organic grower isn't interested in growing a seed crop - he's too busy growing vegetables, which is his area of expertise. And he doesn't want to tie up one of his beds for the extra months it takes to grow the seed crop out. least, I'm hoping that's the case - that's what he told me, and I believe him, for the moment...  . He would also get exclusive access to my seed - gives him a point of difference with his competitors, so he needs to please me or I will take them elsewhere. So, I'm madly sowing F6 purple and yellow snows hoping they will set seed before the heat of summer, so I have a seed crop for the farmer next autumn... T |
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Post by Carol Deppe on Oct 8, 2014 20:01:18 GMT -5
Those of us I know who make any money breeding and releasing new open-pollinated public domain varieties are doing it mostly in combination with something else related. Most commonly, we run small seed companies and/or are seed growers (selling seed to retail seed companies) along with our breeding work. It is actually our seed growing we are getting paid for. However, the fact that we have lists that include unique varieties we bred ourselves helps attract interest and customers. It makes us the premiere source for those varieties. In addition, some retail seed companies are willing to pay a voluntary royalty on the seed if they pick up and grow your variety themselves, which also helps. And if you are a small seed-company/breeder, customers who care about public domain varieties often make donations to help support your work, which also helps. Selling vegetables for market, selling vegetable starts, running a CSA, or owning a nursery could also combine well with breeding. In my case, I first wrote about gardening, including plant breeding, which also worked. Now that I have been breeding long enough to have a number of my own varieties, I also run a small seed company. So basically I sell seeds and information directly and plant breeding mostly indirectly.
My major not very helpful advice with respect to making money at freelance plant breeding is to start 20 years ago. For the first decade or two you just aren't releasing new stuff of your own. Then once you get 20 years in, you can have enough projects at different stages so you are releasing at least one or two new varieties every year. I'm at that point now. But it sure took a while.
I think of breeding new open-pollinated public domain varieties mainly as a public service. It does not monetize very well. Many valuable activities that make a serious contribution to society do not monetize very well. If you love doing plant breeding and are driven to do it, you do it. If you can figure out some way to combine it with something related you can get paid for so as to get paid at least indirectly for the plant breeding, fine. If not, you have an ordinary job and breed plants on the side.
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Post by billw on Oct 9, 2014 14:09:48 GMT -5
My case is a little special because i'm not a farmer, but i would like to make hobby breeding because i enjoy that, and i would like to get some money back for the time and effort involved because my professional job is not making much money right now. So i'm on a kind of speciality small-scale breeding (this is why i look at things like crowdsourcing). Well, why not give it a try? Has anyone else done this? At what stage of your breeding would you seek funding? If you have a good network of people with interest and your goals are humble, it might work. Maybe you can release annual "snapshots" of the project for people who are interested and want to try out the intermediate generations. For farmers, breeding for the farm makes sens and it can save money by saving on costs, adding productivity or adding something special on the farmer markets as you said Joseph. And the farmer can sell some seeds too as you do William (btw i remember that you want to develop hybrids for you farm and to sell, is this because of the control that hybrids bring you over seed production or it is for growing purposes ?) Many of the plants that interest me the most are polyploids, so it is hard to avoid hybrids, but I'm not attached to any particular strategy. OP is great and so are hybrids. My longest running breeding is actually OP - winter cauliflowers. I have also have a number of other OP projects that have been going for more than five years without any sign of conclusion. I wish I could take caroldeppe's advice to start 20 years ago, but I wouldn't have had the patience then anyway. OP breeding can take a long time - another reason why I like polyploids and vegetative propagation. As has been clearly demonstrated in this thread, everybody has a slightly different solution, depending on what resources they are starting with. It sounds like you are going to try something new. Make sure to let us know when your crowdsourcing project goes up! |
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Post by nicollas on Oct 10, 2014 2:27:09 GMT -5
Thanks Carol, if i could i would go back 20y ago and kick the 10yo boy for not beeing serious enough about gardening I like the idea of public service, and in my pro job that is computer science i'm all for opensource software, but sometime it bugs me that useful/regenerative ways of life are not getting a financial return for its usefulness (and it is not rare that it does not yield social awareness too). Bill, i am not aware of any breeding x crowdsourcing hybridization I should have be more precise on "hybrids". I'm not in an F1 breeding/strategy, but i'm for now focused on perennializing or improving some perennials. So for the first one i look at wide crosses/hybrids and sometimes polyploidization. The "cold hardy perennial bean" thread on this board is a good template to what i'm looking to achieve. So these are not humble goals but ambitious ones (that is an advantage of hobby breeding), so for the crowdsourcing idea i think i would launch a campaign once the project is achieved, as a condition to share the seeds. As goals may not be achievable or achieved i dont want to take money before getting results. I dont feel totally comfortable with that but i can be seen as an invitation to start more projects, or share seeds of other projects ? Other projects are better for releasing snapshot/beta material, as for example crosses of jerusalem artichokes. Your breeding/selling/blogging experience is an example for me too, but i think i'll be in a much modest size than you, as you are semi-pro. But i think the market in Europe is much smaller than in US, so only projects that yield seeds could be shared extensively. For sure i'll let you know about my breeding projects and any move to a profitable breeding hobby |
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Post by 12540dumont on Jun 8, 2015 12:09:34 GMT -5
Boy if you want to make money, make sure NPR does a story about what you are doing. Look at the Bradford Watermelons. They had so many requests for seed, their site crashed.
So, if a noted chef does an interview with a major magazine and mentions your "corn, beans, squash....Jupiter Peas" suddenly people want to plant them. Now the problem is being prepared for that scenario.
I have spent the last 35 years farming. I have saved seed for 10 of those years. I'm not much of a plant breeder. But what I have been doing is selecting plants for drought. As the drought worsens and spreads, perhaps these seeds will be of use.
The most money I have ever made on seeds was in conjunction with a charity. I packaged sunflower seeds and did a fundraiser for bees and cats. The sunflowers fed the bees, the money fed feral cats. As a result of doing this fund raiser, the feral cat org gave my son a job. Now that's money no longer out of my pocket!
So Templeton, you just got to get a famous chef to rave about the Jupiter peas or the Martha Stewart of Oz.... Get them to publish you in OZ Geographic, with your students eating peas!
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Post by templeton on Jun 8, 2015 20:07:23 GMT -5
Any luck with the Jupiters, Holly? Glad to revisit this thread. One way of crowd sourcing for my pea project would be to put up a request to hire land so I can grow out a big enough crop to get a commercial amount of seed. The 80 or so plants I'm growing this winter are just not going to produce enough for a real commercial crop. However, I posted some pics of my purple snow peas on the local facebook 'gardeners buy swap sell' group. There are 4129 members from a town of 82000 people. In 12 hours 120 members of the FB group have liked my post, with around 5 requests for seed - which isn't available yet. It was a pretty photo. The seed crop has about 20 pods that are at eating stage at the moment, which i could take into a chef. But that's my potential seed crop! I want to get a lot of bang for those lost seeds, if i do pick them... decisions, decisions.... T  |
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Post by philagardener on Jun 8, 2015 20:34:44 GMT -5
They certainly are beautiful, T!
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Post by 12540dumont on Jun 8, 2015 22:55:39 GMT -5
Templeton, just waiting for those lovely September days to plant peas....
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. He would also get exclusive access to my seed - gives him a point of difference with his competitors, so he needs to please me or I will take them elsewhere.
