Whether you are a farmer or an agricultural entrepreneur, planning financial data for your farm is one of the most difficult problems to deal with. There is a fine line between overspending and underspending on your business. If you spend too much, you risk the profitability of your business, and if you spend less, you risk losing product quality and, as a result, you risk losing customers. So, how can you cut costs without compromising quality?

Here are some tips:
1: Think about all the scenarios that may occur once you start managing your own business.

2: Include a contingency of 10-20% regarding costs, returns, etc.

3: Track as much data as possible at the start of operations.

4: Invest in a talented and team grower.

Regarding cost cutting and quality control, know that it is important to get customers and for their maintenance. Customers are willing to pay a premium for high quality products, and if the quality of the product drops, you may lose customers, and it is almost impossible to recover them when that happens. If you need to cut costs, you should always do it with areas that don’t affect product quality.”

This brings us to the next suggestion:
5: When cutting costs, you should not compromise on quality.

This means not reducing labor for product selection, washing or other post-harvest activities. This also means not compromising the costs of crop management.

So where should and should not you spend?
The key to reducing costs is to identify and remove inefficiencies in production and post-harvest processes.

6: Bring an outside analyst to get a new perspective on what could be done differently.

This can be a great way to get results on the road of improvements and efficiency.

If you are still in the planning phase, the Germina adaptive greenhouse can be a great tool for those who are just starting in agriculture or considering a new crop or a new production system. The team is currently updating and fine-tuning the system to allow users to customize their contingencies in their financial models.