Hmm... It's a romantic notion, but the suggestion doesn't scale. Which suggests that maybe there is something missing. If $1 worth of beans will yield 120 pounds of coffee, then $100,000 worth of beans would yield 12 million pounds. Thinking about what it takes to produce that much coffee brings to mind paying for the land, irrigation, soil treatments, harvesting, storage, insurance, etc., etc. So the $1 worth of seed-beans is not the only cost required to produce the 120 pounds of coffee beans. Without analyzing the remaining expenses, it's hard to evaluate the investment.
> Growing coffee isn’t hard. It’s the time-consuming extraction of the beans that defeats would-be backyard growers.
> Every season when the coffee bushes hidden in the shade of the Wattles Farm community garden in Hollywood start to produce cherries, one of the gardeners volunteers for the process of peeling the shells, removing the fleshy pulp along with the interior parchment, and washing and air-drying the tiny beans within.
> “They’re very enthusiastic in the beginning and are still enthusiastic at the end because the coffee is very good, but they swear they’ll never do it again,” said Laurel Delp, one of the gardeners at Wattles.
Also, according to that romantic notion:
> A dollars’ worth of seeds will result in a conservative estimate of 60 plants. Each plant yields 10 pounds of coffee cherry per year.
> Do you have the patience to wait for three or four years? Well that's about how long it will take you before you can harvest your first beans from your own coffee plant. ...
> Coffee plants will produce fruit without any fertilizing whatsoever, but for best results and maximum yield, they should be fed every 2 weeks from March to October, and then monthly from November through February. Use a soluble, all purpose (10-10-10) fertilizer.
As you say, the land, water, fertilizer, and time to farm and process the plants, and delivery costs, are all assumed to cost nothing.
I know this probably isn't an entirely serious article but still.
Is the end result of having nearly $5,000 really economical, considering the time investment required as well as the money? You end up with $5,000 at the end but have to live in the meantime in order to farm the coffee and chickens...
...and what of the opportunity cost of not doing almost anything else with your time. That's well below minimum wage.
Nice as a parable about leverage, but the farmer in me observes that land isn't necessarily cheap, and you have to own some to do this. ("Assume the existence of a can opener," and all that.)
Also, your thirty-six unprotected chicks will probably be eaten by a fox or a coyote (depending on region). Remember, these animals are nocturnal hunters; just because you don't see them doesn't mean they aren't there. (Of course, if you assume you have a guard dog to go with your land, the problem's more or less resolved.)
Still, growing trees with valuable fruits, as a form of low-touch agricultural earnings, isn't the worst idea; I've been fond of arboriculture ever since reading _1491_.
"Putting your 401k towards making the world a better place is not a good retirement strategy."
I know this is throw away line but over the long term, Socially Responsible Investment and Impact Investment funds investing in B Corps have been known to yield at least the same, if not better financial returns over their traditional counterparts.
