8-7 IAN Green Gold

 There’s gold in them thar fields… Green gold.

Galen Lee is co-owner of Sunnyside Farms in New Plymouth. One of his new crops is 35 acres of asparagus. “Asparagus is one of the first crops out of the ground in the spring. It is coming from the roots so it is sitting in the ground already and doesn’t have to be replanted every year. It starts coming out from the middle to the end of April and the picking season we run will go through the middle of June.”  And who is hard at work harvesting these delicious stocks? Jessie Vargus  and his crew of migrant workers. Jessie is a farm labor contractor. “We have anywhere between 20 to 25 people out here cutting asparagus for Sunnyside Farms. Basically we are just happy to have workout here and happy to get the asparagus out and cut and get it to the house where we can clean it up and ready to sell.”  I will tell you who else is happy to get it cleaned up and ready to sell. That would be Galen Lee. Listen to the economic dynamic that goes along with asparagus and a mere 35 acres.  “The research we have found is you can typically pick 1000 pounds to the acre off of your first year, second year, they talk about 3000 pounds roughly, then it works its way up until about year six and in full production, you can hit about 7000 pounds per acre per cutting season.” So doing the math. 35 acres times 7000 pounds per acre and Galen sells at a $1.85 a pound.That’s a potential $453,000