Realistic expectations for Ocean farm bring-home/lifestyle
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Hey there everybody!
I have been lurking and reading about ocean farming for quite awhile! I am currently active duty military thinking about getting out and becoming an ocean farmer. I love the mission of restoring our oceans and providing food in a sustainable way. For the life of me, I can not figure out what a realistic net profit would be for an ocean farmer working with Greenwave. I have a few lifestyle questions about Ocean Farming for anybody that is willing to answer them!- What can I expect to me making for the 20 acre farm model that i see here on Greenwave?
- Is it year round? If not, I am assuming I could not rely on income for the whole year?
- How many hours a week would you put into the farm?
- What do most farmers do for health insurance?
Thank you for answering and have a great day!
@brendan_byrnes Sometime ago, we did a rough study about cost and profits and is included in a free booklet located at the Marinea website. (https://marinea.org) This is an excerpt from the booklet.
"The current price of corn as of September 16, 2020 is $3.7175 per bushel or about $5,000 per acre. The profit expected from an algae/seaweed farm is $6000 and there are no fertilizer, pesticide or maintenance costs. The early farmers would each be given a 20 acre plot to farm. That should produce around $100,000 per year, not a bad income. By combining fish farms with seaweed you will have two cash crops and the fish farms will feed the seaweed while the seaweed cleans the water for the fish to thrive well."
@brendan_byrnes GreenWave put together a Ocean Farm Basic Financial Model which may be of use to you. It was also covered in the How to Start a Kelp Farm course in week 4 if you want to have a more in depth overview of how to use that model.
Hope that helps for some of your resources!