An unusual but potentially lucrative venture has caught the attention of many, and now the farmers in New Zealand who are hoping to sell their beans for a quick buck.
The idea for the Black Beans on the Bricks project originated when a group of farmers decided to raise beans in a greenhouse, so that they could be harvested by farmers in a field and used to produce an exportable commodity.
A farmer in the town of Maungata decided to start raising the beans in his backyard in the hope of selling them for a small profit, with the idea of using them to feed people and make money, with plans to eventually sell them for $10.
The farmer and a few other members of his family had bought the beans from a farmer in another part of the country, but the farm was struggling financially, and there were no other local farmers who would grow the beans.
“I had no other options, and I was just sitting there with my beans and thinking, ‘I guess we can do this’,” says Sam Burdette, one of the farmers involved in the project.
Burdette said the idea for this new venture started in his family, when he and his parents had a few black beans grown and sold as beans by the roadside in the late 1980s.
“They were good, they were delicious, they had a wonderful aroma,” he says.
“It was just an idea that we had and we just kept on growing them.”
The farmer said that the bean could be eaten as it was, but was often sold for a higher price than what it was worth.
“The farmers who grew them said it was better to get rid of them and sell them to someone else,” he said.
The farmers in Maunganata grew and sold the beans for about $10 each, which meant they could eventually make about $30,000 per year.
“We thought, why not sell the beans to people?
It was a real good idea,” says Burdettes son, Matt Burdett.”
What people didn’t realise was that this is a business.
It’s not a joke.”
The Black Beans On The Bricks initiative was started in April this year.
The first batch of beans that were harvested were sold to the farmer and his family for $100 each, and later to another farmer, who made about $150,000 selling them.
“As soon as we started selling them, we thought, ‘why not sell them in a market?'” says Bredette.
“So we started to think of ways to make money from them, which we started doing with a local farmer in nearby Otago.”
Then we started thinking, we could sell them at a farmer’s market, so we sold some to farmers in Auckland and New Zealand and in Manukau, and then we sold them to a group in Manawa, who started selling some to other farmers in their village.
“There were other farmers selling them too.”
The farmers sold the bean to several other farmers, and it was the first time in New South Wales that the beans were sold for $30 each, says Bridette.
That was when it really hit the media.
“People were really talking about it, and we were talking about selling it, so I thought, we can really do this.
We could actually make money out of this.””
We have this great farmer, and a farmer from Otago, who was selling beans, and he’s selling beans for $80 a pound, and they’re all good.”
The bean was then taken to a farm in Wellington, where the farmer had sold the crop to a local businessman, and the beans have been sold to a farmer there.”
We need a farmer who is selling beans and making money from it.”
The bean was then taken to a farm in Wellington, where the farmer had sold the crop to a local businessman, and the beans have been sold to a farmer there.
The bean is now sold by a group who hope to sell the bean at a farmers market in the New South, which is scheduled to start in February.
It is a project that has caught some people’s attention in the media, with some of those in the know saying they have sold beans for between $50 and $100 per pound.
“A lot of people who are not very knowledgeable about this and people who have never been involved with this before, they’ve just bought it for a dollar a pound and thought, that’s all they’ll ever pay for a bean,” says Matt Bredett.
But the idea is not without risks.
“For us, the bean has been around for a long time and there are many people that are really passionate about it and are just trying to take advantage of this opportunity,” he explains.
“This is a risk we’re taking, and that risk is that it’s potentially a money-loser.”
“It’s a risk that the farmers are taking, but we have to keep going and keep doing what we