Garlic Farm Business Plan, With a Projection

A garlic farm business plan has a crop that's planted in the fall, harvested the next summer, and partly planted again. Garlic grows from cloves, so every harvest has to set aside its own seed for the next planting, about a fifth of the crop here, and that seed is worth more than anything else the farm sells. So the plan has to show the first planting's seed in the startup budget, the year's work before the first harvest, and a selling season that starts in July and runs on stored garlic into winter. In the example below, a half-acre garlic farm in western Colorado sells culinary garlic, seed garlic, braids and black garlic, and ends a selling year about $21,700 ahead on $38,200 of sales, before paying the owner. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, saving seed, the year month by month, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the farm in a paragraph: the varieties, the acreage, where you sell, the goals.
• The growing is fixed: planting, mulch, weeding, harvest and curing, paid whatever sells.
• Cost each sale from the cleaning, grading and packing up.
• Seed garlic brings the most a pound; culinary garlic the most pounds.
• Save about a fifth of the crop, the biggest bulbs, to plant again.
• Braids and black garlic carry the sales into winter.
• TaroStack keeps garlic by variety and harvest, seed apart from what's for sale, and black garlic as a recipe. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Paonia Mesa Garlic, a made-up garlic farm near Paonia, Colorado, I use in these examples, writes:

Paonia Mesa Garlic grows hardneck garlic in eight varieties on half an acre, with a few beds of softneck for braids, sold at two farmers markets, to restaurants, and as seed garlic shipped to gardeners in the fall, with black garlic made from the crop in winter.

Part 2: what each sale costs

The planting, mulching, weeding and harvest are fixed costs, and so is the seed, which comes from the farm's own crop. What a sale costs is the work after the harvest:

Seed garlic is sold by the pound to gardeners who plant it in the fall, so it's graded for the biggest bulbs and packed to ship, with postage charged on top. How to turn a crop into products that sell through the winter is in value added products for farms.

Part 3: customers and prices

A pound of seed garlic leaves $20.65, a pound of culinary garlic $12.23: the same bulbs, graded bigger and sold to gardeners in the weeks before planting. The margins look high because the growing is in the fixed costs; the year's profit is the test. Selling at markets costs more than the stall fee; how much more is in cost to sell at a farmers market.

Part 4: saving seed

Each bulb planted in the fall is broken into cloves, and each clove grows a new bulb. This farm plants about 400 pounds of its own biggest bulbs each October and harvests about 2,000 pounds of hardneck the next July, so a fifth of the crop goes back in the ground. At the seed price, those 400 pounds are worth $9,600, more than any month's sales, and that's why the first planting's seed is the biggest purchase in the startup budget. The seed has to be kept apart from what's for sale, by variety, from the day the crop is graded, or the best bulbs get sold at a market in August. How a season's stock is planned is in seasonal inventory.

Part 5: a selling year, month by month

Fixed costs are $825 a month: land rent for half an acre ($100), straw mulch and fertilizer averaged ($80), field help for planting, weeding and harvest averaged ($400), power for the curing barn's fans ($30), market fees ($100), the website ($30), insurance ($50), and software and card fees ($35). Month 1 is January; the harvest cures in July and sales peak in August and September:

The year's sales are $38,190 and the profit $21,702, before paying the owner. The projection spreads each product over the season the same way; in practice seed garlic sells from August to October, and the braids, the stored bulbs and the black garlic carry the winter. Cash dips to −$822 in June, before the harvest, so the plan keeps $2,000 of working cash.

Part 6: the startup budget

The first planting's seed is bought, at about $15 a pound in bulk from another grower, and the nine months of fixed costs from planting in October to the first harvest in July come before any garlic sells. After that, the farm plants its own. At $21,700 a year, the $21,200 spent before working cash is earned back in about a year of selling.

Get the template

Download the garlic farm business plan workbook. Four sheets: your culinary garlic, seed, braids and black garlic with price, variable cost and August's volume; the year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash, and month 1 set to January; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash and the first planting. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Eight hardneck varieties and two softneck, a harvest graded into seed, culinary and seconds, seed orders shipped by variety in September, braids made in batches, black garlic fermenting in three-week runs, and 400 pounds that must not be sold. A notebook can't say how many pounds of the Music variety are left for seed orders, whether the planting stock is still all there, or how much black garlic a winter's worth of seconds will make.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps garlic by variety and harvest, seed apart from what's for sale, and black garlic as a recipe.

Garlic by variety and harvest. Each variety is an item, and each harvest a lot with its date, counted in the curing barn on a phone, so the pounds of each variety left are a number.

Seed kept apart. The planting stock is put on hold, which keeps it from being sold or picked for an order, so August's market can't sell next year's crop by accident.

Black garlic and braids as recipes. A jar of black garlic is a recipe of garlic, a jar and a label; each fermenting run is a batch that takes the garlic off stock and gives the jars a lot.

Counting, lots, recipes and batches are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How profitable is garlic farming?

It can be, on a small scale. In the example, a half-acre farm ends a selling year about $21,700 ahead on $38,200 of sales, before paying the owner, with seed garlic the most valuable sale by the pound.

How much garlic should I save for seed?

In the example, about a fifth of the crop: 400 pounds of the biggest bulbs from a 2,000-pound harvest, enough to plant the same half acre again.

How much does it cost to start a garlic farm?

In the example, $23,200: $6,000 of seed garlic for the first planting, drip irrigation, curing racks, a walk-behind tractor, black garlic fermenters, a market setup, a website, the fixed costs until the first harvest, and working cash.

When is garlic planted and harvested?

In the example, planted in October and harvested the next July, then cured for a few weeks before it sells; the timing moves with the climate and the variety.