RM 21. That’s the sales from the first day of setting up at my apartment’s basement carpark’s unmanned “store” (at my own parking lot). Not bad, but certainly suggests an untapped potential of ready consumers keen for some easy grabs of fresh farm produce.
This is hardly scratching the surface, and I haven’t even got to the papayas, eggs, herbs and frozen durians! I have lots more to sell but unfortunately, a number of these food items are rather unconventional and may not necessarily appeal to mainstream taste buds; terung pipit (pea eggplant), pucuk ubi (cassava leaves), lamtoro beans (petai belalang).
Why don’t I go with “conventional” one may ask. SImple. Your conventional veggies (bak choy, sawi, kale, etc) are resource intensive requiring great care and attention. The idea is to go with perennial food systems that thrive in neglect but the challenge is to educate and encourage consumption of these basic but often times as nutritious if not more than conventional types (But conventional will always be KIV when situation permits.). That takes time and a gut-wrenching test.
It’s a test I’m currently putting to fruition in this market size of less than 150 units apartment. Eat local if you will. Reduce food miles is the game. From planting, harvest, transport and selling. Truly the business of permaculture extends beyond soil matters and the mechanics of nature conservancy.
Delivering produce is crazily tiring. Setting up a stall by the road side in this raging covid era is out of the question. Selling to middle man is out of the question as it’s a volume game I’m unwilling to consider. Manning my own store is unrealistic as I need to work the farm. Onlines sales with delivery platform? Perhaps, if you’re willing to sacrifice for smaller margins. So what’s got to give?
The idea is simple. I’m not about to deliver 100gms of calamansi limes and a small packet of chillies 3km from my house every time (unless there’s a bigger order to tag along with). How can I make this work by selling and supporting the community I live in without travelling much in the lowest cost possible?
For two months between early Aug (when I first started) until early Oct 2021, this is how it’s been like; selling from my carpark space at the apartment basement. Harvest and pack at the farm, drive home, dump the produce just two feet from my car and go! It doesn’t get any easier than this.
So far, my biggest customers have been the Indonesian cleaners who simply love the tapioca shoots, ulam raja, terung pipit, etc. all super food, albeit rather unconventional vege. The occasional but more common sweet potato leaves, malabar spinach, chicken eggs, bananas and papayas are of course snapped up almost instantaneously, all without me doing delivery.
It’s much easier this way, though to date, I’ve about RM 25 sales unaccounted for versus an estimated sales of currently RM 150-200 (and growing) monthly. The RM 25 “lost” over two months, though painful, is certainly a necessary “cost” which is cheaper than hiring a staff to man the stall. But not having anyone physically present to overlook things does have its drawback such as times when ripe bananas appear as a buffet spread for squirrels.
Overall, I’ve been deliberately limiting the amount for sale due to lack of space and buyers; I’m currently only selling to Block B residents and Block A is unaware of my stall’s presence. These two months experiment has proven successful and slowly I will find a way to reach out to Block A.
Have you tried looking into CSA? I know if you are providing CSA near Kota Kemuning (that’s where I am based), I’d totally sign up for it. My wife and I returned to Malaysia about 5 years ago from Canada. We were there for a decade and we use to subscribe to a CSA service there. At that time, membership was about CAD$100/ yr but we can come and collect weekly vege from the farmer for a fee (about $CAD30/ wk) which is a mix bag of veges depending on season and what was harvested for the week.
Hi Philip, thanks for the feedback. CSA is a tried and tested model. Unfortunately, I don’t have the labour and financial resources to make it work. Hence, the limited range of low maintenance items on sale and not the regular mainstream leafy vegetables. Will keep you in mind though.