Horticulture Notes October 2011

I am frequently contacted by horticultural producers, farmers and land owners about the opportunities to grow and sell cut flowers.  If you are curious about the idea of growing and selling cut flowers to local markets to generate an income for yourself CAFRE is currently running a course called ‘Introduction to Cut Flower Production’ between autumn 2011 and spring 2012.  This course consists of a series of very practically based workshops including visits to and discussions with growers and florists/wholesalers about growing and marketing flowers.

As part of this course we recently visited Trainview Farm at Ballygowan, CoDown to learn how Valerie Orr started her cut flower enterprise in 2010 after attending a cut flower short course at CAFRE Greenmount Campus in 2009/10.  Valerie really benefited from her training and was keen to pass on her knowledge and experience to others interested in growing cut flowers.

Later this month, we will hold our second workshop of the course with a visit to a local polytunnel building company to learn how to build tunnels suitable for growing cut flowers.  Please contact me at my email address if you wish to attend the course.

I had the pleasure of recently hosting a visit by the some of the main cut flower producers in England.  During their visit they learnt about cut flower production in Northern Ireland by visiting three local cut flower growers and by viewing the cut flower Technology projects at CAFRE’s Greenmount Campus.  Their main interest was the production of season extended cut flower Stocks (Matthiola incana).  The English growers between them produce more than 10 million stems of Stocks for the UK multiple retailers.  They were interested to learn how the cool Northern Ireland climate allows our growers to produce Stocks for a longer season than is generally possible in SE England where the summer temperatures cause the flower quality to decline below marketable standards.  In contrast Northern Ireland growers can produce good quality Stocks from May to early October giving them a competitive advantage.

Benchmarking in horticulture involves recording business costs and output and comparing them with other businesses. Benchmark results will provide detailed management information indicating the strengths and weaknesses of a business and identifying areas for improvement.

As a horticultural producer you will have several key business decisions to take over the years and it is important that these decisions are based on sound facts relating to the physical and financial performance of your business.  Benchmarking is an extremely valuable tool to help with this decision making process, should it be short term agronomy decisions to improve production or longer term investment in new crops.

CAFRE’s Greenmount Campus Horticulture Benchmarking Programme is a farm management accounting system that offers you the opportunity to record your production costs and output and compare your results with other similar farms.

For any 12 month period, all the expenses attributed to your business are recorded.  This is mainly covered by your VAT book.  To complete the picture, a record of the income that the farm generated over the same 12 month period is needed.  

With your assistance the necessary input sheets will be completed during a visit to your business.  Input sheets are then used to complete the details of your horticulture business in the benchmarking program and a confidential financial report will be generated.  The benchmark report will show you a complete breakdown of the costs of production and hence all the associated margins for your horticulture business.  Most importantly the report also shows averages and best of group for similar growers, for comparison purposes.

A key element of the benchmarking process is group feed back discussion for growers in the same sector of horticulture who have used the system.  This is a free and confidential service available to horticultural producers in Northern Ireland, which can be accessed by contacting your CAFRE Horticulture Development Adviser or CAFRE Senior Business Technologist, Charlie Kilpatrick.

Valerie Orr of Trainview Farm with her crop of locally produced cut flower Alstroemeria

English growers with David Davidson visiting the cut flower Technology Projects at CAFRE’s  Greenmount Campus