We started natural green farms five years ago with the idea being able to produce food in a more e-fish-ent and environmentally friendly way,
inside an old multistory building. By growing indoors using Energy efficient lights you eliminate all the problems of growing outside. This
way you can control everything and if there is a problem, It's usually something you did or did not do that caused it.
I was told repeatedly from many different sources that it would not work. They said the cost of energy would be more than the product you would produce
would be worth and they listed numerous other problems you would have growing in an enclosed building.
They all said that you would need to have a greenhouse to grow the produce in. It just made me want to start even more just so I could show them that it could be done
For the first eight months. We tried growing tomatoes and it just wasn't working out and we didn't have the time to figure out why it wasn't working.
We desperately needed to get a cash flow going, so we switched to lettuce. Lettuce was a good plant to experiment with it grows in 45 days. So if something
is wrong with your system within a week or two, you will know and you can throw the plants out and start over and correct the problem. Not like tomatoes,
which took months before you found out you had a problem.
Back to the naysayers they were right. It was costing us a $1.65 to produce a head of lettuce that we were selling for a $1.40 not a very good
business model.
I'm happy to say after a lot of trial and errors, we can now grow a head of lettuce for $.99 with a couple more changes to our system, and a
little bit of experimenting we will be at $.75 a head. Even At $.99 head you still have to grow millions of heads of lettuce per year in order
to make it into viable business.
Current production capability is 60,000 heads of lettuce a year. When expansion is completed we will be able to produce over 6 million heads
of lettuce a year.
As we expand the farm. I would like to start growing strawberries and raspberries, but as you can see with the lettuce. It may take a year or
two to get it down to a science. It will be worth the effort because berries are a very perishable and high-priced crop, even more when out of
season.
Now for the fish: We have a radical new design for the fish system which will eliminate the use of the electric pumps and the use of liquid
oxygen. These are our two largest expenses after food. We also have a way to cut our food costs by one third, By making our own feed using
recycled produce waste. We will pick up the recycled waste as we are making deliveries to our customers. This will save them money by not
having to pay to have the waste dumped at a landfill and At the same time giving us a steady supply of waste that we can recycle and turn
into fish food. Since tilapia are vegetarians this will make a good natural source of protein for them. We will still feed the fish a commercial
diet two times a day to make sure they get a balanced diet with all the nutrients that they need and one meal a day will be our all natural
environmentally friendly secret house recipe.
As we add more tanks with the expansion of the farm we will start raising more profitable fish. One such fish is the lake chub. It's a native
fish from Lake Michigan, which has been fished out so the demand is very high for it, selling retail in the stores for $12 a pound. The fish
buyer from a large Grocery chain store in Wisconsin said he would pay me whatever I wanted. If I could raise cubs for him. So if we got six
dollars a pound for them that’s a lot better than $2.65 a pound. That we are getting for tilapia.
Current production capability is 30,000 pounds of tilapia a year. With the expansion we will be
able to raise over 1 million pounds of fish and 200,000 pounds of crayfish.
So that's a quick history of the farm where we are and the plans to take it to a commercial scale. If you would like to get involved with the
farm and taking it to the next level. Check out the investment page. With this project, one person can make a difference, and together we can
solve the world's food shortage problems, by simply growing the food where it is needed. It really is a simple answer to a huge problem.