High Profit Crops for Small Farms and Homesteads
Making a profit from what you grow is so important because it keeps farms alive!
Unfortunately focusing on the bottom line is essential to keeping farms around.
There are more options on the table for you to choose from than you can imagine. So for all of the backyards, homesteads, big farms and everything in between, here are the crops that will give you the most bang for your buck.
We have decided to compile this list without the addition of grains and fruit.
Fruit, for the most part, is an investment that can take years to produce a harvest from and most grains require huge amounts of space, lots of water and are rarely grown by regenerative means.
Microgreens
Let’s start with the crops that require the least amount of space possible and work our way up from there.
Microgreens has become a bit of a fad among smaller operations. Even if it’s not their main source of income, it’s such an easy and cheap way to make money on the side, that it would be foolish not to set aside a little space in the basement for it.
A grow light, some seeds, and trays is all you need and if you grow anything at all, you probably have all of those items already.
You can harvest twice a week from a single tray, equating to a massive amount of produce being moved in the fastest amount of time possible.
Microgreens for culinary use and sale to restaurants and grocery stores is probably the most common way to get a sale. But if you remember the complications that the pandemic brought to the hospitality industry, you need to realize that it’s a very unpredictable market.
If for some reason people cannot afford or are hindered from eating out, well then you suddenly have no one to sell to anymore. There is a sideline for animal feed that many fail to realise is a very viable stream of income.
Guinea Pigs, rabbits and birds all benefit from the high nutrient, and varied, feed that comes from microgreens. But your market doesn’t just have to revolve around pets.
Chickens, ducks, quail, meat rabbits and even larger livestock farming actually have a need for high nutrient options for their animals, especially if your greens offer some medicinal value.
If that’s a market you’d like to target, choose your greens around plant sorts that can aid with parasites, colic and other diseases.
The medicinal microgreens are just as nutrient packed as they are good for treating livestock conditions. At least it will widen your market quite a bit.
Mushrooms
Similarly mushrooms don’t take up much space and you can get weekly harvests with little to no care from you.
The species that you can grow is endless, but oyster mushrooms are probably the fastest growing and the easiest of the lot. There are specialty species that will fetch a higher price like Shiitake mushrooms. It all depends on what you feel like taking on.
But mushrooms are not nearly as easy, or as cheap, to get the set up going. You need very specifically cultivated soil, you can produce your own, but it takes time and expertise.
Fungi just needs very specific conditions in which to grow. Light, moisture, soil and ventilation all need to be taken into account.
And like beekeeping it’s one of those ventures that can be very profitable, but it requires more expertise than most people realise.
So do your homework before taking it on, and be prepared to make an investment into the equipment before you reap the rewards.
Leafy Greens
Leafy greens like kale, spinach and lettuce are all relatively easy to grow, don't require very much care and you can fit a lot into a small space.
Any leafy green has a short shelf life, so the only real consideration you need to take is that you need to move your product almost the moment it needs to go out to the shelf.
This is also a very oversaturated market, since they’re so easy to grow and multiple harvest can be made from a single plant relatively quickly, so your main concern will be in networking to get buyers as soon as you can.
Spices and Herbs
Low growing herbs like lavender, basil, rosemary, thyme...oh there are too many to list, are fantastic options for culinary sales and farmers’ markets.
Any bush will deliver an endless amount of harvests, so lack of sales on a bad day won’t kill you financially.
Ginseng, tarragon, lemongrass and sage all sell for more than average and they don’t require any expertise to cultivate.
If you have space for trees and your climate is right, vanilla, pepper and bay leaves are high value too.
By far saffron is the most expensive and time consuming spice in the world. A single ounce can sell for 500 Dollars.
Almost all of the spices and herbs, no matter what you choose, will require specific climates and conditions to grow.
Sure you get your no nonsense basil and dill, but a plant like saffron and tarragon needs your constant love and attention.
There’s a lot of money to be made with the sale of herbs and spices, probably more than any other item on our list, but you need to know what you’re doing and your climate needs to be ideal for what you wish to grow most of the time.
Garlic
Garlic doesn't need that much room to grow, just the right conditions and plenty of compost.
The wait time is quite long, and like all vegetables that take long to mature, that drives up the price.
Besides it’s garlic, it’s just one of those vegetables that you can’t go without. Right next to onions, potatoes and salt and pepper.
It’s equally valuable as a dehydrated and a canned product, making the scope of your options just so much wider.
One back yard can absolutely produce enough garlic to bring in a very decent income at the end of every season.
Peppers and Chillies
Peppers and chillies will be the last of the produce that can be grown in the bakyard on our list.
Besides being a very popular kitchen aid, both for the home and for restaurants, there’s an enormous range of ways that they can be processed and sold.
Hot sauces, dried flakes, fresh and in the form of pastes and stocks, just to name a few. But they also have the additional marketability that most forget, seed sales.
Chillies especially have a bit of a fan following. And a die hard one at that. Horticulturalists just love collecting unusual specimens and they end up with huge collections that rival an art gallery.
Entire online forums are dedicated to trading seeds and cultivating new strains through selective breeding. It’s a fascinating world, full of trading and experimentation.
Both peppers and chillies require the same conditions in which to grow and it's usually one of those plants that’s advised for first time gardeners, since they’re just so forgiving.
Pumpkin and Squash
Pumpkin and squash can be used interchangeably in food, it produces quite a lot on a single vine and it’s got the dual purpose of being in high demand as a decorative item and a source of animal feed.
So even the fruits that aren’t pretty enough for the shelf or has a spot of rot on it can still be used as a treat for the goats, pigs and chickens.
The thing about pumpkins and squash is that it’s not limited in its growing season.
We usually grow it as a fall crop just because it’s one of the few vegetables that can be grown in cooler temperatures. But it does just as well in Summer and Spring too.
It can do fine in winter if your area doesn’t get cold enough to allow snow. So you might just be able to grow it all year around.
And that’s why it’s profitable, not because it’s worth that much more, but because you can have a constant supply all year if you plan your operation right.
Sunflower
Now we’re getting to the crops that require at least some acreage to support them. Of them all, sunflowers need the least amount of space and are the easiest to grow.
It also has the widest range of uses of our entire list. High value oil, the whole seeds for eating, a high protein animal feed, baking flour, floral arrangements…heck, even the whole stalk, roots, leaves and all are excellent for fodder.
They grow fast, they’re drought resistant and even if you’re growing it in your backyard you can plant them relatively close together, meaning that you can make products from it yourself to a much larger degree than any other field crop.
It’s doubtful that sunflower production will ever take a hit on the market, there’s just too many ways to use the entire plant.
Bamboo
Bamboo is a surprisingly easy to grow crop that grows as fast as microgreens. It grows nearly 3 feet per day!
And it's highly valuable as a fuel, food, clothes, textiles, medicinal and construction material. Its use as a building material is probably where you’ll find the highest demand.
Besides furniture and as a building material on its own, it also serves as a very good support when constructing bridges, homes and as scaffolding.
The great thing about bamboo is the fact that even a small patch allows you to get a lot out of it, because it grows so fast.
You can also store it long term, slowly growing your supply to sell in one large sale at the end of the season if your space is on the smaller side.
The only real issue is that bamboo needs heat and copious amounts of compost.
The immense energy required to grow at such speeds means that it will be a predictably high feeder. But the amount it produces makes all of the additional needs worth it at the end of the day.
Flowers & Bonsai
Flowers are regarded as one of the most profitable ventures that you can go into as far as planting something goes. The reality is that even if the economy isn’t in great shape, people will always have babies, get married, propose to future partners and sadly, die too. There is an endless amount of special occasions that you consider milestones and commemorating those moments usually involve flowers. For a few dollars worth of seeds and enough compost, that you can probably make yourself, you can grow just about anything if the climate allows it. Now make no mistake, it might not be expensive to get started, but it requires more know-how than any other item on our list. Growing flowers is a notoriously finicky thing to accomplish. They need love, care and constant attention. And soil conditions and over or under watering are always at the forefront. Tulips and roses have entire communities around them regarding breeding and exchanging information. Books have been written about single species and their cultivation. It’s not for everyone because of the intensity of the care involved, but it is incredibly lucrative, and always in demand.
Cultivating bonsai trees and bushes is another decorative plant venture to look into. It’ll take a few years before your specimens are ready for sale, but since they take so long to cultivate, they go for insane prices. Yes it takes a long time to get into the market, but the labour is much less demanding. All you need is patience, a set of pruners and a thirst for experimentation.
In our honest opinion, our 4 most profitable picks would be mushrooms and spices for the very small spaces, and if you have an acre or more to work with, then it’s bamboo and sunflowers.
Your climate might need to be right for it, and you definitely need to educate yourself, especially when it comes to growing herbs and mushrooms.
But all 4 have the widest scope of uses, all can produce multiple harvests in a season and none of them will ever have a hard time being sold, no matter what the state of the economy is.
