REX OBERHELMAN: $27,000 (Net!) from Five Organic Acres

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We'll furnish their working capital that first year, and recoup that money in two years out of their sales to us. By our projections, they'll each gross $53,000 the first year. After taxes and paying us back half their loans — with 8.5% interest — they should each net $22,600. The second year, they'll pay us back the rest of the loan and net $24,000. After that, they won't owe us anything, so their income should rise significantly.

PLOWBOY: $53,000 is the same gross income you have — can your licensed growers really earn that much? After all, a lot of your income has come from your greenhouse operation, and these growers won't have their own greenhouses.

REX: No, but they'll have something I never had . . . a market for their grade-B produce. Every year the Armour food-processing plant 12 miles from here — the one where I used to work — consumes $2,613,000 worth of four products: tomato paste, broccoli florets, frozen cabbage leaves, and pepper halves. The Tony Downs plant 30 miles away uses $360,900 of the same four products annually. Right now both companies import almost all of that produce from California, Mexico, and even Guatemala. Why, Armour imports two semi loads of broccoli florets a week, and the shipping freight for each load is $2,000! We'll process those same four products for Armour and Downs at our plant and save them the shipping charges.

So while our licensed growers will raise the nine basic crops we have, they'll put more focus on broccoli, cabbage, peppers, and tomatoes. They won't grow as many pumpkins as we do — otherwise we'd plug up the market with pumpkins. And they'll each grow the same amounts of each crop. It wouldn't be fair if one farmer got to grow the easy-to-raise crops and another got the real labor-demanding ones.

PLOWBOY: What about your farm? Surely you can't manage all this and keep your own truck farm going, too?

REX: I'm going to hire someone to help out on my place. He'll work with Sharon, Lisa, and Jodi. We may grow more than seven acres here so we can start testing other products like asparagus, strawberries, blueberries, and hubbard squash. We have to look for ways to keep expanding this operation.

PLOWBOY: Rex, the whole thing sounds fantastic! I hope it succeeds.

REX: Oh, I'm sure we'll have problems and situations to deal with. But it will work because the markets are already established. That's unusual in agriculture today: to find an item that you can market at a profit.

So all we need to do now is produce marketable crops, because these farmers can grow anything. They're expert growers — they produced themselves into the poorhouse with corn and beans. We've got to get them raising the right things — things they can make a living from.

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