How to Start Your Own Coffee Farming Business

Sunday, November 17, 2013

How to Start Your Own Coffee Farming Business

If you want to earn money, you can start your own coffee bean farm. This is a great way to provide the local market with quality coffee beans. You can sell the beans fresh or you can dry them out.

Maintain high quality at all times to get higher sales. Promote your business thoroughly to gain recognition and visibility.

Coffee Bean Farm

There are many ways to make money. If you’re hard working, motivated, and determined, you will surely be able to pick the right business opportunity. Starting a coffee bean farm may seem overwhelming at first but if you try to enhance your knowledge and skills about the industry, there is a way to succeed. You should know the growth requirements of coffee and the things you need in the coffee bean farm. You will need to work on your business plan. Conduct a market study to know the existing competition. There are established coffee bean companies out there. Do you think you can compete with them?

Location is vital to success. Is your region suitable for growing coffee? You can grow the coffee beans on nursery beds and poly bags. Hire staffs to help you in planting and growing the coffee. Depending on the size of the farm, you can hire 3 or more employees. Since you’re going to sell the coffee beans, you have to secure a business license. That way, you can operate the farm legally. Determine if there are zoning requirements in your place and comply accordingly.

Growing Coffee Beans

When germinating the seeds, you can choose between two methods. The first method is spreading the coffee seeds on sand beds and covering them with straw or burlap bags. Another method would be mixing the seeds with expanded polystyrene or moist vermiculite. The seeds are kept in polythene bags. When the seedlings have grown to 20 to 40 centimeters, they will be planted on the fields. The soil should contain rotted manure from cattle as well as phosphate fertilizer. The beds should be at least one meter in width and the seedlings should be planted around 50cm deep. Each seedling should be spaced 12-15cm.

It’s best to pick a shaded spot for the nursery beds or you can construct temporary shading. As the coffee grows, shading should be reduced gradually. If you decide to grow the coffee from polybags, you will need black diothene and fill it with topsoil, rotted manure, gravel, coarse sand, coffee husks, or coffee pulp. You can use this ratio 3:1:1; 3 is for the topsoil and 1 for coarse sand and rotted manure. Now that you know how to grow coffee beans, you can now start with your own coffee bean farm. With the right knowledge and skills, you will be able to earn a lot of money. Sell the coffee beans in the market and always maintain quality.

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Start Your Own Coffee Farm

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How to Start Your Own Coffee Farming Business

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Easy Tips and Ideas to Start Business

Although anyone can start a business, many people fail because of a bad product or improper research. If you want to start your own business, you can improve your chances for success before you even begin. In order to make your business successful, start strong and make sure that your idea will hold out for the long haul.

Have a Good Product

Ensure that you plan to sell something useful. Although you may think that your product is important or special, that doesn't mean the general public will agree. Ask friends, family and strangers what they think of your product. If they don't seem that interested, ask them why. With their suggestions, you can either improve the product or scrap the idea completely. According to Brad Sugars of Entrepreneur magazine, most small businesses fail because they sold a product that didn't have an adequate market. This also applies to small businesses that provide a service. A lawn-care business might be useful for part of the year in a northern state, but it is in-demand year-round in the south. Consider whether people will actually want to use your service and get constructive advice from those not afraid to give their opinion.

Research Local Businesses

Research local companies before starting up your own business. This will not only give you an idea of the amount of competition you will have, but it will also help you price your product or service. If you're looking to start a wedding photography business, you may find during your research that the market is over-saturated in your area. If not over-saturated, you should contact each business and ask them for a price list. Alter your prices so you can stay competitive with the competition in town. Researching similar local businesses will also help you decide where to locate your business location. Try not to start up a store or office close to another business of your type. If your small business is located away from similar business types, this will cause locals to choose you over businesses that are farther away from where they live.

Get Professional Advice

You may know someone who has started their own successful business. Ask him for advice and listen to his stories of how he started his company. You may gain useful advice on the good and bad ways to start a business. Local entrepreneurs can also introduce you to local product providers or advertisers that you may not have met without their help. Accept any advice with open arms, especially if the advice is coming from someone successful in the area.

How to Calculate Business Start Up Costs

Starting a business in no easy endeavor. It takes a great deal of research, perseverance and hard work. While sweat equity will make your small business more successful, you will most likely need real capital to get the business started. Before you start raising capital and/or investing your own funds, the first thing you need to do is determine the total start-up costs.

Step 1

Determine your costs of sales. For most small businesses this means inventory, the cost of raw materials, manufacturing equipment, shipping, packaging, and warehousing. However, not all businesses sell products. In this case, the cost of sales is primarily the direct labor involved in making the sale. For example, to open a small shoe business entails purchasing enough inventory ($10,000) to stock the store.

Step 2

Determine professional fees. Planning your business structure, i.e., limited liability corporation or general partnership, means hiring an attorney. There may also be the need to pay an attorney for help with establishing trademarks, copyrights, and patents. In this scenario, that puts total professional fees at an estimated $20,000.

Step 3

Determine technology costs. Technology can greatly reduce the cost of labor for small business if used effectively. Most small businesses require computers, printers, cell phones, website development, Internet access, software applications, information security, data storage, and outsourced information technology (IT) consulting. If the cost of technology is $10,000 to start, add an additional $5,000 a year for maintenance (hint: maintenance is not included in start-up costs).

Step 4

Determine administrative costs. This varies with business types and may include items such as business insurance, office supplies, product packaging, parking, rent, express shipping, desks, chairs, fax machines, phones, or anything else necessary to operate the business daily. A good estimate for start-up administrative costs would be $5,000 for the first six months.

Step 5

Determine initial sales and marketing costs. Now that you have your product, you need to let folks know about it. Sales and marketing costs generally include marketing materials for presentations, printing stationery, business cards, advertising, trade show events, and public relations. These initial sales and marketing costs can add up to $3,000.

Step 6

Determine the wages and benefits needed to secure a staff. This includes employee salaries, benefits, workers compensation, and payroll taxes. Let's put the cost of wages and benefits estimated at $20,000 for the first three months of business.

Step 7

Add all costs associated with starting the business for a total. Be sure to only include business start-up costs that will be incurred in the first three to six months of operations. For this example, the calculation is: $10,000 + $20,000 + $10,000 + $5,000 + $3,000 + $20,000 = $68,000.

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Sunday, November 17, 2013