Initial post will be tl;dr but will keep replies brief if anyone is interested or has questions.

Background:

Life is just too damn short to wait for your dreams to happen by magic, recognized some lagging opportunity in land prices and having an odd obsession with delicious lemons, decided that now was the time to buy my 'vision' for retirement which has always been a hobby farm, sitting on a porch in a lemon grove watching my trees grow fruit. While the profit motive is there, it's not a primary consideration. I just want to grow the best lemons ever grown, experiment with some hybrids and sell enough to restaurants / high end groceries to keep the place breaking even.

ITT, as things progress, I will update.

As things stand:

Modest parcel (5-10 ac) acquired in Florida. It was completely overgrown and not ready for ag use, so it came pretty cheap. Also, bought it at the absolute bottom of the market, so it came cheap-cheap-cheap. Lastly, it's not quite south of the Indian River which puts it in the climactic freeze zone, meaning that citrus crops come with risk since hard freeze = adios to all your trees.

Learning Curve Adventures So Far:

* WETLANDS.
Do not ever buy raw land unless you understand this Y factor.
Will dedicate a post on this in the future. I got dumb lucky in that Florida has programs in place that down-regulate land use restrictions when possible wetlands are involved with light agriculture use- which is my intended use- but they're a multi-jurisdictional (Local/State/Federal) nightmare and I bought without fully understanding this. Turns out the place had some minor wetlands on it. It could've been disastrous and required tens of thousands of dollars in wetland mitigation credits. So far, it's looking to be workable and I do intend to play within the rules on this. Have already met once with the Department of Environmental Protection and they were actually super cool, so happy to be working with them.

* Going to the US Department of Agriculture and trying to import seeds from Italy under a special program that allows small growers to import small seed lots. Rejected. Turns out that the process to import citrus seeds is incredibly complex.

* The permitting requirements to ship citrus interstate is massively more regulated than the permitting requirements to deal in explosives. I am not kidding. This has to do with citrus greening and preventing the spread of other citrus diseases/pests. Understandable: it can do billions of dollars in damage.

* Bidding work.
So, the land is overgrown and needed clearing. The math just didn't quite break in my favor to rent a dozer or cat and do it myself as an inexperienced operator, so I took bids. Likewise, I needed a survey done to determine the property lines. Whatever you do, learn how to bid projects. For example on the survey, I had estimates as high as $11,000. I wound up getting it done for a grand, then saved another grand or so by installing the concrete boundary markers myself (yellow paint and 1.19 concrete pavers from Home Depot). The more flexible you are with time frames, the easier time you'll have finding a qualified party willing to do the job for much less as a 'gap filler' job. My experience bidding projects in tech was indispensable here. Also, learn how to run a chainsaw. You're gonna need it.

* Hiring Labor
Day laborers aren't as expensive as you might think and provide a huge liability barrier over hiring random people from the Home Depot parking lot. Have to get some fencing done which will involve a two man auger, lots of bags of concrete and dozens and dozens of 6' fence posts. Needed two extra hands, they came out to about $13 an hour (each) from the day labor place.

Will probably be using this option a lot more in the future.
Be clear and up front with your labor provider that you will not accept layabouts, slow-pokes or drunkards. Keep your expectations reasonable. Tip your men well when the job is done well and you'll build up a portfolio of available hands who are extremely hard working and reliable. You will, however, have to resist the temptation to hire outside the day labor umbrella. Its cheaper but you lose your liability protection and your workers will definitely offer that option every other sentence.

* All the wildlife in Florida will kill you.
The moment you set foot in their native habitats, the animals immediately start plotting on how they intend to take you out.

* Guess which one costs more?



Currently in the process of learning how to import farm machinery direct from China. This involves EPA certification, shipping logistics, customs brokerage and clearing, etc. I have a feeling this will either result in huge regret that I didn't just buy a used Kubota, or some sort of lucrative spin-off business.

* Learning the basics of Ag
Yields per acre, yields per tree, trees per acre, cost per acre, obtaining organic certification, this has been the most knowledge-intensive part of the whole process. Also, the regulatory aspect here is insane. Be prepared for your head to explode. Huge agribusiness has had a hand in seeing to it that small farmers are regulated/bureaucratted out of existence.

* Property Absenteeism
Since I'm doing this for the benefit of my life 5-7 years from now, it gives me the advantage of buying younger, less mature trees at a much lower price and letting them grow in the meantime. The downside is that said trees require more maintenance and since I'm not living there, I'll have to pay a man to maintain them. There's also the really obnoxious reality of property crime in rural America (since everything is remote), which means anything I put out there is subject to vandalism, theft, etc.

* Building Regulations
Think you can just 'buy a place in the country and put up a little cabin', think again, at least not in FL. Everything has to be fully specced on plans and wind-engineered to code so in addition to learning the import/export business and the ag business, because of my kamikaze DIY ethic, I'm forced to become a hack structural engineer and architect on the fly.

(Protip: Plans/CAD/Engineering can be very successfully outsourced.
Thanks again to tech project management for that light bulb moment.)

So for now, that's it.
E-I-E-I-O.

Also, a brief, preemptive apology to all my family and friends who once enjoyed great gifts on holidays and birthdays but will soon know what they're getting from me, every year.

Merry Christmas. Here are your lemons...

How'd you identify the land parcel and acquire it? Who was the seller? Why lemons as opposed to oranges, limes etc?

It was a new (less than 72 hours old, iirc) MLS listing. Seller was an investor who took a serious bath on it (per its most recent transfer price) and for whatever reason wanted out ASAP. At that time, there was such little demand for land parcels that a buck was going pretty far with lots of different options although this one stood out.

It took me a year to find the right one, researched a ton of different parcels, visited 5 and damn near bought every time but at the time, the deals were just getting better with every passing month. Banks were returning to meaningful profitability and were dumping inventory for the tax offset so the bargains were insane. When I finally arrived at one that was basically "You're never, ever going to do better at this price", I bought.

I may actually dedicate a couple acres to other citrus types or even something like olives or berries) but lemons because seriously, for whatever reason, they're my favorite fruit. As dumb as it sounds, I actually am interested in lemons. I have no idea why but I eat them with everything and cannot drink a glass of water without one.

OP, fruit trees are awesome and so are you for following your dreams. Best of luck with your venture.

It's often said that the mountain of regulations and laws (added to every single year) are killing US GDP. That we somehow managed to do just fine in 70s and 80s without literal mountains of paper telling us what we have to do.

Do you agree with this? Reading your post I'm struck by how much time and entrepreneurial energy is redirected into trying to figure out one law or another.

How much money would you make off your lemons at full production?

The bureaucracy is the most mind-blowing thing I've ever experienced in my life.
Like, makes me want to leave the country bad. Growing citrus in Florida also requires deep involvement with the state Department of Ag and another 4,000,000 forms filled out in triplicate, including bonding. If I weren't dedicated, no chance I'd have the patience for this ****.

I'm going to go about selling the lemons a bit differently, retail and locally direct. They won't be cheap, but they should be much, much better than the baseball-like yellow objects that are genetically engineered for shelf life and imported from South America.

The USDA already shot me down to import seeds for these:



... from Italy, so I'm exploring domestic options and will probably wind up developing my own breed.

sounds awesome. If you haven't already, you should try to get in touch with the Univ of Florida county extension office, they should be able to help point you in the right direction on Ag stuff.

When I lived in South Florida we grew all kinds of stuff, mangos, pineapple, lime, and avocado.

Not familiar with your area but down in south miami in the Redlands there are tons and tons of smaller farms with stands setup selling fruit trees and they had all kinds of interesting stuff: blood oranges, tangerines, dragon fruit, limequats, buddha's Hands and things I've never heard of. Might be worth a drive down there to check it out. I know kumquats are more cold tolerant than most citrus, so could be an option up where you are.

Good luck, not sure how easy organic will be as some of the pests down there are brutal but interested in seeing how it turns out.

Awesome thread, thanks for posting. Looking forward to more.

Very interesting, good luck!

Very awesome thread, can you talk a bit about the financial metrics? What are you expecting the pay off to be? How long do you think it will take to be viable?

Interesting thread. California has the Williamson Act where you can get lowered property taxes by making a commitment for X number of years to not convert your farmland into industrial/residential/commercial zoning, maybe worth looking into if Florida has something similar?

Thx for the OP; it's nice to see some on-topic variety in BFI.

I have a few friends in agriculture and if there is one thing I have found nearly universally true in the industry is people don't value their time very much. As such, I wouldn't even think about owning any equipment, especially given your small acreage. With a little leg work I guarantee you will find competent people willing to bring their equipment over and perform any services you need for less than COC, maintenance, depreciation, labor, etc. (relatedly, the same principle often applies to land; it's almost always better to rent)

Best of luck.

A close friend just established a Grade A dairy. I stayed somewhat in the loop throughout the process and the amount of regulatory hoops was mind blowing; each one manned by different bureaucracies/bureaucrats with different expectations, requirements, etc. It was a major hassle.

I was reminded of it last week when Balaji S. Srinivasan tweeted about compliance as a service (CAAS) being a largely untapped area that would lend itself well to software oriented startups. I wholeheartedly agree.

+1000 on the UF Ag Extension offices.
One visit so far, crazy-crazy helpful. Its one of the times when I've actually felt like I was getting actual value for my tax dollars, rather than just going to pay for some do-nothing to sit at a desk.

Over the years they've developed some solid cold tolerant rootstocks that I'm going to start off with.

As far as organic, the certification process itself is a bear and you have to pay for 'renewals' and 'inspections', etc. Citrus psyllids are a**holes, there are hojillions being spent on figuring out how to defeat them. My inner dork is actually most excited about experimenting with this.

Raving, boring tl;dr content on citrus parasites below.

Citrus trees have a production span: productive, most productive, declining productivity. A big advantage I have is that I can start with very cheap rootstock and let it grow instead of having to buy mature plants at a much higher cost.

Since I don't have my real world yields yet nailed down, I'm going by estimates off the back of the brilliant work done by the Ag extensions from the citrus states. (Just to reiterate, these guys are rockstars. Legit performers.)

Here's a 2010 study from University of California on lemon orchard establishment costs.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.c...&ct=clnk&gl=us

A 1997 study on similar from UC Davis
https://webcache.googleusercontent.c...&ct=clnk&gl=us

Very rough estimates: 100'ish trees per acre
300-500 50# boxes per acre @ year 5 (increasing to 700'ish boxes @ year 8, yield peaking out around year 20)
150-200 lemons per box.

My model isn't 'roadside standing' or bulk production, though, as much as it is trying to break into the farm-to-retail organic food products sold direct to high end restaurants and consumers, since the goal is to grow an objectively better lemon that people who care about food would pay a bit more for. This is a real wildcard for margins, since I won't be selling them for 15 cents a piece to wholesale processors and the added marketing costs should generate a relatively strong ROI.

They have decent property tax abatements/decreases for aglands, plus there's the whole weird Federal farm subsidies thing but I'm not taking those on principled grounds.

You're absolutely correct, however this is very much a 'lifestyle job' and there's no chance I'm forgoing riding on a tractor, with a cowboy hat, waving at the cars as they drive by, every ****ing opportunity I get.

This is pretty awesome. I'm 24 and already I'm wondering about maybe one day just retiring to a life on a peach orchard. I'm glad you are writing out the toughest parts of it so that I can actually have an idea of how insanely difficult it probably will be. But I suppose most things worthwhile are very difficult.

By the time you're 44 or 54, the only thing I can guarantee is that you'll seriously regret not buying your land when you were 24.

Aglands are in full ****** bubble mode, when it pops nobody knows but general food price inflation may be a secular thing and obviously, that is tied to agland prices. Its probably like the tech bubble in the late 90's. They were absolutely correct, the internet was destined to be a 'big deal' but speculative attention spans are often times a lot shorter than secular growth.

Nice thread. I have been getting somewhat involved in ag, as my dad owns an ag services, farm chemicals, fertilizer, custom farming etc business and farms a few thousand acres. I've been getting more involved over the last couple of years since Black Friday, and though I never thought it'd be the case, I definitely find farming oddly enjoyable. We just farm corn and soybeans, so not completely relatable. Could definitely imagine something like lemons being even more enjoyable.

Regarding equipment, things will inevitably break, need maintenance etc. If you have no experience, you probably underestimate how often. Something to keep in kind with your idea to import equipment from China. One good thing about John Deere and the other big companies (though they are definitely overpriced) is how quick and easy it is to get parts and service. I'm assuming that won't be the case if you are importing equipment from China. Regardless, if you are going to own equipment and aren't a good mechanic, I'd be finding one.

Also, I agree farm land is getting up there into bubble territory. I'm in Ohio fwiw.

A+ thread

I am REALLY looking forward to following this thread.

I'm OK with that sort of thing. Cars were my hobby for a while. I can weld if need be.

The China ag machine thing is interesting in that a lot of their offerings use standardized platforms (Cummins engines, etc), coefficient with readily available parts.. Keeping it as un-proprietary as possible is always a good thing.

I'm just old enough to remember "THE JAPS MAKE JUNK!" about Hondas and Toyotas. Seeing very similar mantra-based 'opinions' about Chinese machines even though reports from actual owners tend to be overwhelmingly positive.

In the era of global manufacturing, "you get what you pay for" is an anachronism. You can pay more and get less, pay less and get more or pay more and get the same damn thing you could've gotten for a lot less if you shopped right.

I'm not going about it lightly, I do understand the added risk and am prepared for it being a bad decision.

Yea I'm definitely interested in hearing how that goes.

It is probably a bit different for us too, where in the spring planting and fall harvest, everything is a manic frenzy to get as much done as quick as possible, and equipment is being run near around the clock. And any down time is extremely costly. I'm not sure if you have anything like that or not, I know nothing about citrus fruit farming.

I'd be really interested in hearing about your life experiences, and what lead you too becoming a "lemon farmer", outside of the fact, that lemons are certainly very delicious. You appear to be a really smart guy.