ThunderLips
Well-Known Member
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.
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.
