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What We Learned
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How Much Can We Make?
In proving out our economic expectations for Bamboo Farming we can break it down into our two crop areas:
Shoots – we have 3 harvests under our belt, but it’s complicated to understand how the actual harvests validate our expectations of the crops.
- Production at maturity – we found good outside independent research from our friends in Australia that enabled estimates at maturity of 15,000 – 20,000 pounds per acre. We can’t show this as proof for several years until we have mature farms harvested.
- Impact of Farm Quality on Production – we have documented that our early farms were less informed, typically do it your-selfers, and with all good intentions, resulted in lower quality farms. Today’s best-producing farms show that initial planting on well-drained soil with good water and nutrition drives the farms to maturity.
- Production in the early years – the first seasons of harvest were a period of learning. The harvests were not consistent weekly harvests for 20-24 weeks because we didn’t know the proper frequency and we encountered practical challenges with Covid and supply chain issues. We also learned that we needed a minimum diameter at the base of shoots of about 3”. All this added up to less harvest quantity than was in the farm.
- Why 2023 Harvest is so important – in 2023 we hope to capitalize on our better understanding of the plants so we can create a consistent weekly harvest over the 20-24 weeks and that we include all of the farms that are ready (this year 160-200 acres vs previous 3 years of 40 acres). We expect this to translate into a much bigger harvest, potentially over 200,000 pounds, and to yield real data about what we can expect in the early years of harvests (pounds/acre) and what this means for profitability.
Here is an update on our Sales Channels development:
Wood – the biggest problem is that the markets are not developed so we have no clear idea of revenue and margins. Most of the existing bamboo wood markets import the products as finished goods from Asia. Effectively the missing element in the US is manufacturing ability. Of course, there was no point in developing this until we could supply them with real quantities of raw material.
We set out to fill in the blanks of our understanding by working with potential buyers in each of about 14 prospective sales channels to partner with them to develop their ability to use our bamboo culms and so they could tell us what specifications would be required and an estimate of what they could pay farmers.
Wood Harvesting – The nature of a heavy crop like bamboo culms is that they are quite sensitive in logistics and in the costs of harvesting.
The logistics sensitivity has caused us to focus on buyers that are nearby.
Transporting to Atlanta for hardwood floors can hurt potential margins.
Harvesting in forests is done mechanically. We are exploring the process and equipment required to develop mechanical harvesting for bamboo wood. The expected benefit is to reduce what could be $80/ton for manual harvesting down to potentially $20/ton for mechanical harvesting.
Bamboo World
