Before you start creating your own small greenhouse business , you need to evaluate how profitable it can be in your conditions.
To do this, you need to conduct a marketing study: is it worth opening greenhouses in your area.
In general, the greenhouse business is highly profitable and, as a rule, investments in it quickly pay off. However, it is necessary to take into account a number of problems that exist in this segment of business, and correlate them with the expected profit.
The main steps in conducting a marketing research for a greenhouse are:
1) First of all, you need to research the market, that is, the demand for greenhouse products, distribution channels and competition. If there is a city near your farm, then you should go through the distribution networks in advance, assess the availability of the products you are going to grow, retail prices and demand from buyers.
2) After making sure that the grown products will be sold, you need to try to identify distribution channels. For example, for vegetable products and greens, it can be supermarkets and even small convenience stores. For flowers — flower shops. You should know in advance the conditions for accepting products for sale and wholesale prices in order to plan income.
3) After that, you need to carefully evaluate the costs in order to approximately calculate the profitability of the greenhouse business.
To start your greenhouse business, it is absolutely not necessary to have large areas of land.
The high yield of green crops in greenhouses allows you to start your own business even on 6 acres of land.
Therefore, the initial investment is reduced mainly to the construction and equipment of greenhouses. Let’s face it, if you are already engaged in greenhouse farming as a business, then you should not try to equip the greenhouse somehow. It is much more profitable to build and equip one greenhouse at a good level than five «knee» greenhouses. High yields in a well-equipped greenhouse will pay off the costs of it and generate income for the development and construction of the following greenhouses.
The main factors for successful greenhouse management are the availability of water and heat.
If there is water on your site, this is already half the battle. For heating greenhouses, it is not necessary to be able to heat with gas. Many entrepreneurs use economical long-burning stoves or even simple “potbelly stoves” for heating greenhouses.
It is also necessary to pay special attention to the condition of the soil. We recommend that you conduct a soil analysis and get recommendations from experts, as well as plan sources for constantly feeding the soil with mineral and natural fertilizers.
By the way, in parallel with the greenhouse business, you can develop a business on Californian worms , and get a double benefit from this: fertilizing the soil in greenhouses and selling ready-made fertilizers and breeding stock.
For the construction of greenhouses, you can use ready-made sections of industrial greenhouses, and for their equipment — drip irrigation and temperature control systems, which will drastically reduce labor costs and water and heating costs.
Marketing research on the future greenhouse can be done by yourself.
If you are going to use external investments or borrowed funds to create your small greenhouse business, then you will need to prepare a business plan for creating a greenhouse business, which you can buy or order on our website.