4 ms·

> I'm not being discouraging, I am being realistic Hardly, you don’t know anything about how difficult it is to do what they’re trying to do. For all you know

> I'm not being discouraging, I am being realistic Hardly, you don’t know anything about how difficult it is to do what they’re trying to do. For all you know it’s a crop that essentially grows itself and has a huge market demand so selling is easy. Your experience in unrelated small businesses in another country has very little bearing.

traceroute66 4y ago
> it’s a crop that essentially grows itself and has a huge market demand so selling is easy. I'm sorry but you're hilarious. There is no such thing as "grows itself" and there is no such thing as "easy selling". Many years of experience can make growing LOOK easy. Many years of experience and contacts can make selling LOOK easy. But the reality is it isn't. I mean, look at programming. Anybody can learn to program. Anybody can use boilerplate code and WYSIWIG editors to make code that "essentially writes itself". There is also "huge market demand" for programming. But the reality is people, especially the good paying people, want experienced programmers, not noobs. An experienced programmer can make programming LOOK easy. An experienced programmer can have a book of high-paying clients. But that is due to the experience.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  Don’t cherry pick words to change the meaning of people’s sentences, it makes you seem disingenuous. Edit: see also the top-level comment from the former actual coffee farmer who said that there’s not that much to do outside the harvesting season. This goes to my actual point, which is that your experience in a totally different field doesn’t translate. Now that’s hilarious.
- mtsr 4y ago
  You're potentially setting the bar very high, though. Sure, experienced programmers can command very high rates. But even mediocre programmers can make a good living. The same could very well hold for a coffee plantation. I've seen something like it with an orange/nispero/avocado orchard. Yes, it's easy to make mistakes and it's not easy to get rich. But break-even is quite possibly not that hard to achieve. As another poster mentioned, these things are very regional. In the orange orchard case, there happens to be a cooperative in almost every larger village in the whole region. You can easily source everything you need there and you can sell your produce wholesale. Both at fair rates, since the neighbors also go there and they pay/get the same. And there's plenty of neighbors who will be willing to help out (although you might also find those who want you to fail to buy your land). And for the day-to-day you can make use of the experience of day labourers that you can pretty much always find in these areas.
- behringer 4y ago
  Honestly I don't buy your argument. In the US you can take your crop to the nearest grain elevator and sell it by the truckload. If there's a way to unload your coffee in Madagascar the same way, one only needs to learn how to tend the farm. Without any experience in coffee farming, I can't say if that's as easy as shaking the tree under a barrow or what. I really don't see how you could know any more than that. Yes running a business can be hard, but not necessarily.
jacquesm 4y ago
Friends bought a relatively large olive plantation. They had a ton of savings, moved from NL to Portugal and went 'all in' It took them more than a decade before they really got the hang of it. By then their savings had depleted and they had no other option than to flee forward and really make it a success. It worked, barely. There is no such thing as a 'crop that essentially grows itself'. It may seem like that to people that visit supermarkets rather than farmhouses, toolsheds and plantations. Any kind of cash crop will require money invested upfront (land, plants, this part seems to be covered), money until maturation (irrigation, fencing, possibly pruning depending on the crop), money to harvest. And if you're lucky they pay-off from the harvest covers all those other costs, or hopefully at least a substantial fraction. And if it doesn't there's always chapter 11... When you're used to the kind of income that software can generate farming anything seems like very hard work, even when it works well.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  All that proves is that farming olives in Portugal is hard. Is farming coffee analogous to farming coffee? According to the actual former coffee grower in this thread, no. Is selling green coffee in Madagascar hard? None of us knows. > When you're used to the kind of income that software can generate farming anything seems like very hard work, even when it works well. Even if that’s true, so what? They didn’t ask, is this a better path to getting rich than working at a FAANG. They asked if anyone knew how to do it. The only correct answer for the people in this thread would be “nope, no idea”. Thus my point that they’re not being “realistic”, they’re just well-actuallying someone without having any relevant knowledge. Seek to understand, don’t just be a wet-blanket.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    > Seek to understand, don’t just be a wet-blanket. Stick to what you know, or get burned.

traceroute66 4y ago

> it’s a crop that essentially grows itself and has a huge market demand so selling is easy. I'm sorry but you're hilarious. There is no such thing as "grows itself" and there is no such thing as "easy selling". Many years of experience can make growing LOOK easy. Many years of experience and contacts can make selling LOOK easy. But the reality is it isn't. I mean, look at programming. Anybody can learn to program. Anybody can use boilerplate code and WYSIWIG editors to make code that "essentially writes itself". There is also "huge market demand" for programming. But the reality is people, especially the good paying people, want experienced programmers, not noobs. An experienced programmer can make programming LOOK easy. An experienced programmer can have a book of high-paying clients. But that is due to the experience.

Godel_unicode 4y ago
Don’t cherry pick words to change the meaning of people’s sentences, it makes you seem disingenuous. Edit: see also the top-level comment from the former actual coffee farmer who said that there’s not that much to do outside the harvesting season. This goes to my actual point, which is that your experience in a totally different field doesn’t translate. Now that’s hilarious.
mtsr 4y ago
You're potentially setting the bar very high, though. Sure, experienced programmers can command very high rates. But even mediocre programmers can make a good living. The same could very well hold for a coffee plantation. I've seen something like it with an orange/nispero/avocado orchard. Yes, it's easy to make mistakes and it's not easy to get rich. But break-even is quite possibly not that hard to achieve. As another poster mentioned, these things are very regional. In the orange orchard case, there happens to be a cooperative in almost every larger village in the whole region. You can easily source everything you need there and you can sell your produce wholesale. Both at fair rates, since the neighbors also go there and they pay/get the same. And there's plenty of neighbors who will be willing to help out (although you might also find those who want you to fail to buy your land). And for the day-to-day you can make use of the experience of day labourers that you can pretty much always find in these areas.
behringer 4y ago
Honestly I don't buy your argument. In the US you can take your crop to the nearest grain elevator and sell it by the truckload. If there's a way to unload your coffee in Madagascar the same way, one only needs to learn how to tend the farm. Without any experience in coffee farming, I can't say if that's as easy as shaking the tree under a barrow or what. I really don't see how you could know any more than that. Yes running a business can be hard, but not necessarily.

jacquesm 4y ago

Friends bought a relatively large olive plantation. They had a ton of savings, moved from NL to Portugal and went 'all in' It took them more than a decade before they really got the hang of it. By then their savings had depleted and they had no other option than to flee forward and really make it a success. It worked, barely. There is no such thing as a 'crop that essentially grows itself'. It may seem like that to people that visit supermarkets rather than farmhouses, toolsheds and plantations. Any kind of cash crop will require money invested upfront (land, plants, this part seems to be covered), money until maturation (irrigation, fencing, possibly pruning depending on the crop), money to harvest. And if you're lucky they pay-off from the harvest covers all those other costs, or hopefully at least a substantial fraction. And if it doesn't there's always chapter 11... When you're used to the kind of income that software can generate farming anything seems like very hard work, even when it works well.

Godel_unicode 4y ago
All that proves is that farming olives in Portugal is hard. Is farming coffee analogous to farming coffee? According to the actual former coffee grower in this thread, no. Is selling green coffee in Madagascar hard? None of us knows. > When you're used to the kind of income that software can generate farming anything seems like very hard work, even when it works well. Even if that’s true, so what? They didn’t ask, is this a better path to getting rich than working at a FAANG. They asked if anyone knew how to do it. The only correct answer for the people in this thread would be “nope, no idea”. Thus my point that they’re not being “realistic”, they’re just well-actuallying someone without having any relevant knowledge. Seek to understand, don’t just be a wet-blanket.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > Seek to understand, don’t just be a wet-blanket. Stick to what you know, or get burned.