Up to $5000 per lb

ThunderLips · #1 06-21-2008, 09:42 AM

Well apparently Saffron sells anywhere from $600 - $5000 per pound... Depending on quality.
Saffron is a spice used in cooking but its no more than stigmas from a certain flower, Saffron Crocus. Only 3 stigmas grow per bulb and must be hand picked, and dried before selling. Dried weight sells for about $10 - $20 per gram and is about the same price if you bought a gram of bud.

Here is the kicker, since only 3 stigmas per female flower you will have to grow quite a bit to make a pound. In fact only 50 plants will give you a teaspoon of saffron.
It will take 75,000 Saffron bulbs to make 1 pound of the spice. The average picker spends 8 hours a day in New Zealand or Spain where the flower grows extremly well. The average picker will pick 30,000 flowers per day, and spend another 1 1/2 hours plucking each stigma out by hand per 1000 flowers.. roughly another 112.5 hours of removing stigmas after harvesting 75,000 from the field to produce 1 pound.
What I am getting at is where is the profit? If I were to set up a field of Saffron flowers, grew 75000 to get me a pound, Im still not guaranteed $5000 per pound, in fact some Saffron is alot cheaper due to where it was grown.
In Greece they get $600 per kg. thats roughly $272 per pound. In New Zealand they get $1450 per kg equalling $659 per pound....

I am curious if there are any american growers and if so HOW do you profit? Or is it purely for personal use only?

If paid $5000 per pound in the states, the amount of hours needed to produce, roughly 3 weeks of harvesting and drying, not even counting the 3 months needed to grow It's still not worth gram for gram the amount of time commercial marijuana growers spend on growing and harvesting their crop.

This over priced spice is being sold in fancy jars at $20 per gram, this would be the only way for a local grower of Saffron to profit.. By packaging and distributing the spice themselves. But after spending 4 months preparing the spice, who wants to spend even more time preparing and packaging for distribution?
Also how are other countries paying these workers to harvest this expensive cash crop and still the fields are profitting somehow?

Kk so I was bored and have been looking into growing legal cash crops for money and wanted others POVs... Do some research if interested and let me know.

mjetta · #2 06-21-2008, 04:55 PM

i also wondered this. lol

donkeyballs · #3 06-21-2008, 05:06 PM

id rather just grow bud. alot more fun you have wen ur done.

marijuanajoe1982 · #4 06-21-2008, 05:40 PM

This is more just something funny I thought of than something actually practical, so don't take this too seriously. But I bet you could grow a strain of weed with ALOT of red hairs and then just pick the red hairs off the buds. If you grew these Saffron Crocus as well, you could havest it's and mix the red pistils in about 50/50 with the Saffron stigmas. You would not only MORE than double your income as a saffron farmer by adding Marijuana to your product list, AND you just cut the cost of yout saffron in half, my friend! lol

Seamaiden · #5 06-21-2008, 05:44 PM

There are different qualities of saffron as well, not all saffron is equal. If you're going to go to the trouble of growing the bulb, at least make sure it's a finer strain. Did you know that saffron has been being used since at least ancient Greek times? There is ancient Macedonian art showing women saffron pickers.

Myself, I use achiote, a Caribbean seed also known as poor man's saffron. It's good enough.