Profitable Small Farm Ideas

It might sound cool when you are your own boss and set your own working hours. However, the fact is there’re lots of things to consider to make your farm (though small) profitable.

Waking up early and going to bed late isn’t enough. You must understand your local market needs, climate, food sources, budget, and even your farming skills to have the right option. Lucky that you have us!

We’re going to share some popular profitable small farm ideas that not just require little maintenance but also generally in high demand. Read on!

Keeping Animals

Chickens

If you plan to develop a small poultry farm, keeping chickens for eggs and meat is an attractive investment because:

1. The demand for poultry is consistent all-year-round
2. Nothing can’t beat the freshness of eggs from a farm

A common plan is buying hens for egg-laying, then sold them in the market and buy new ones. Repeat the process. But before jumping right into this business, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

Hens are sensitive so make sure your poultry farm is regularly cared and cleaned. Remember to vaccinate them to protect your hens from poultry diseases.

Now, to optimize the profit of this business, you should buy 18-week hens because, at this age, they’re ready for egg-laying. A hen, commonly, lays eggs for around 01 years then is used as Cullen hen later.

Apiculture

Similar to chicken eggs, the demand for honey by the consumers and stores never ends. Moreover, it requires little time for caring, effort, and capital to begin. It would be perfect if you’re a bee lover, too.

Start converting your hobby into a small yet highly profitable business with small beehives then expand it gradually.

The biggest plus is aside from honey, its by-products are also multiuse, such as royal jelly, bee pollen, and beeswax. All of them can be sold at great prices.

Some smart farmers even combine bee-keeping with flower/herb/fruit-growing so they’ll get two income sources at a time.

Fish

Fish-raising is a great profitable small-scale business idea if you also have years of experience in this field.

While many people might think this option would require a body of water to start, it (in fact) doesn’t! The most important thing is choosing the right types of fish to raise. They must be suitable for not just your climate, but also food sources and surrounding animals.

About the water, just investing in a fish tank or digging a fish pond due to your budget.

Not to say that fish-raising is a highly scalable business idea.

If you’re just a starter, trying raising catfish, cod, and tilapia because they’re low-maintenance, suitable for small-scale business, and generally in high demand of local restaurants and supermarkets.

Depending on your agro-climatic condition, market demand, financial capacity, and skill, these types of fish are also worth trying:

• Salmon
• Tuna
• Rainbow and silver trout
• Grass carp
• Eel

Heliciculture

If you prefer a kind of animal that doesn’t cause bad noise, smells, or take lots of space, keeping the snails is worth considering. It might sound crazy to some if they haven’t known about the giant profit earning from this business.

While snails might be a useless pest for crops, they are actually a favorite food (even famous) in some regions.

They, in fact, are widely exported (either in alive or frozen form) to those countries where the natural conditions aren’t good for snail-keeping.

In the cosmetics industry, their slime brings lots of benefits in anti-aging, scar-healing, and more. meanwhile, for medical purposes, they’re quite useful to help suck up dirty human blood from the body.

While heliciculture takes modest space to start with, take note that it requires a bit effort-based because their survival is based on certain things, such as soil, temperature, water, and food source.

Crops

Mushrooms

If the climate conditions in your farm are ideal for growing mushrooms, then why not?

It is low-maintenance, low effort-consuming, and low-space yet brings a really high profit. Some mushrooms have been an indispensable ingredient in many restaurants’ salads and cuisines while a few are used for medical purposes.

Some kinds of mushrooms thrive strongly that you can grow them anywhere, even in harsh weather. But some have high requirements to grow happily, like shiitake and oyster mushrooms.

In general, they take around 5 to 6 weeks to grow and harvest, both indoors or outdoors for all-year-round.

The best (also the simplest) way to cultivate mushrooms is taking advantage of stubble left after your harvest of crops.

Microgreens

This is the best option for beginner farmers because it is low-maintenance and only needs a short time to grow, usually within 14 days.

Meanwhile, the demand for microgreens, especially in restaurants is quite high because of its high nutrition portion, flavorful tasting, freshness, and appealing look. They are commonly used for garnish purposes in salads.

To start growing microgreens, you don’t need much space or farm tools, just a few small trays.

For those who don’t know what microgreens are, this is the beginning stage of the plant growth. In detail, it’s when the plant sprouts out of its seed, called baby veggies or baby plants.

The most ideal height to harvest microgreens is usually 3” tall.

Conclusion

That’s all for this post.

Hopefully, the 6 profitable small farm ideas along with pieces of worthy information have helped you know a thing or two about which and where to start. Thanks for reading!