The third plot, . All matches are coincidental, and the characters are fictitious.
Read the first story at this link, the second story can be found here.
– A mega-profitable berry farm has been put up for sale! $1 million 300 thousand dollars for 40 hectares of berry fields. They write that they sell strawberries for $2.2 per kilogram, blueberries – for $6, the farm is young – 6 years old. Plus, they include in the price a hostel for pickers and a ready-made business plan for the development of the company. Do you hear, Weatherstation? Should I buy it? With grains we are really in trouble now, we have grown it, but sales … It is not easy to get into that “grain corridor”.
– Where is this juice business?
– Behind the mountain. It’s close here.
– Yes, last year we bought their strawberries for compote for 10 UAH per kg ($0.27) to help out these unfortunate businessmen.
– Yah?
– Oh yeah! They started in a rich way: they immediately planted 40 hectares of raspberries. A year later the plantation was cut down up to 7 hectares, later – down to 5 hectares, while strawberries and blueberries were added.
Increasingly, I see how young guys, often IT-IT people, earn good money and invest it … in berries. Finally, on Insta, a natural landscape instead of a computer and an armchair, non-standard angles: golden sculptures in the field, berry in a glass (raspberries, strawberries, champagne) in the rays of the setting sun, happy colleagues in the office eating freshly picked berries.
More and more different berry clusters and funds are scribbling fantastic business plans for such naïve berry growers, from the pages of which liquid gold drips directly. An unrealistic number of people who want to sell fertilizers, crop protection and, of course, seedlings of the most elite overseas varieties to newly arrived businessmen, which they claim will provide huge yields, even if they are simply stuck in foam plastic.
– Well, you say! Not everyone has the same sensors as you.
— You’re right, man, these guys have problems with sensors. You know, Mykhailo Pavlivsky, a well-known berry grower in Ukraine, once accurately noted: “A berry grower has only 4 enemies: spring, summer, autumn and winter.” But if you knew how many people mourn their berry businesses, you would not be laughing now.
A person who:
a) came from another business and only knows about the earth that it is round,
b) hires an Instagram agronomist who was just looking for a field to practice, IS DOOMED TO SUCCESS …
Tell me, who plays a key role in a successful agribusiness?
— Weather station!
— No, agronomist! He, like a virtuoso conductor, determines who and at what moment enters. Saving money on an agronomist is the same as filling up your BMW before a long journey with cheap distillate. The fate of the business depends on how educated and experienced your conductor is, how quickly he makes decisions in appropriate situations. And the weather station is a translator from the language of nature, this is a real opportunity to understand what your plants need right now and what problems await them in the short term.
Not only an agronomist, but also a business owner, with the help of a weather station, can see how to put together the puzzle of the optimum in a given field at a given moment in order to please the plant. The agronomist uses screening data to make a diagnosis, prepare a prescription for a preventive strike, or, worse, to select a treatment / rehabilitation regimen. And the owner of the business, using the data of the weather station, can control the agronomist, indirectly determine his virtuosity or inexperience.
How do you check the skills of an agronomist when you hire him/her?
People are advising…
— A cook can be judged by a cooked dish, a hairdresser by a haircut. In the future, without decision support systems, it is impossible to compete with other farms and survive in principle. I repeat: “The berry grower has only 4 enemies: spring, summer, autumn and winter.” You cannot regulate the conditions of the external environment, but only adjust your actions to the existing parameters, minimize the use of resources, and reduce risks.”
– Man, do you attend agro-conferences, do you look for happiness there? How often do you meet your colleagues there?
– It depends.
— Yes, at every conference 50 percent of the visitors are completely new people. They look at the zeros that the speakers draw for them, hear about “millions per hectare” and rush into battle to earn it. And you know what they all have in common? First, a little experience in the crop growing, the second, “these are all the fools, but I’m smart and the success of business depends on me.” And the more ambition, the higher the losses!
And the success of agribusiness depends on the accumulated knowledge and the knowledge of an agronomist, the accuracy and speed of decision-making. It is no coincidence that they say: “In agriculture, one day feeds the whole year.” And each new season is different from the previous one. It is important not just to grow products, but to achieve maximum yields of the highest quality, since often the difference in the price of products of the highest and second grade is twice the difference. In the race for the highest profit, the one who grows a lot of high quality products at the lowest cost will win.
– So, it should be the one who does not try to save on an agronomist and a weather station. How to choose the best weather station? There are so many of them advertised!
– We’ll talk next time…
Photo: Freepik.com
To be continued
