05 → Saffron
CONTEXT:
Entrepeneurial Project with Ralph McAvoy
Fall 2020
SKILLS DEVELOPED:
Entrepeneurship, Farming, Agriculture
ABOUT:
In the Summer of 2020, near the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, I had just graduated college, so what better to do than grow saffron. The idea started as almost a joke, but turned into a lofty goal that would ultimately lead to a trial operation. I told my friend Ralph McAvoy about my idea to grow Saffron at an industrial scale indoors, and he too was interested in the idea. Near our college in Western Massachusetts, we would always see old abandoned factories or warehouses that had become mostly empty and unused. One fantastic use of these was the creation of Mass MoCA, a museum in North Adams that has lead to a revitalization of North Adams, and has become a cultural hub of the region. Our idea was that we could actually use these warehouses and grow high quality saffron at a large scale. While ultimately the project did not end up coming to fruition, we both learned a great deal about saffron, taking a project from an idea to reality, and had a lot of fun.
THE GRAND IDEA:
The idea stemmed from simply looking at the price of saffron. We wondered whether there was a way that this spice could be more readily available to the world at a lower price. Through more research, we found that the reason saffron is so expensive is because of the low crop yields and high amount of labor required. Our idea was to try optimize the conditions for saffron growth at an industrial scale, to actually try and reduce both the amount of labor to harvest the saffron through a stacked growing system to streamline the harvesting process and have a higher crop yield through experimentation to find optimal growing conditions.
Though saffron is almost entirely grown in arid climates, through some research, we found that it is actually quite a resilient crop and there is an organization called the North American Center for Saffron Research and Development at the University of Vermont dedicated to studying and promoting saffron growth in New-England as a form of diversification for farmers in New-England to grow in the Fall.
We decided that the best way to move forward would be to actually try growing saffron at a small scale in vertical tiers, to both understand the crop and experiment on conditions for crop yields. So we decided to simulate our idea at a small scale using a stackable grow light system, and crates to store the saffron. We bought 500 corms and proceeded with a small scale test in Ralph's basement in September of 2020.
RESULTS AND LESSONS LEARNED:
Through our small scale test, we found two major aspects of the project that were hard to overcome. Our yield was lower than we expected, and though it may have increased in future years (corms multiply and grow over time and we had bought some younger ones), we were not able to really find a drastically improved yield through increased density and optimal lighting. Mainly, our issue was the huge cost required to be able to start a growing operation at a large scale. This was not something that, as two college fresh college grads with no large scale farming experience, we were ready to risk.
Though we ultimately did not end up with a large scale saffron growth operation, we did end up with a decent yield of saffron that we could use and knowledge about saffron and its growth. Most importantly, we both learned how you can take an idea, even a pretty big one, and take steps to make it happen. Neither of us had any experience in farming, and we took a risk to try something new, and challenged ourselves to optimize the operation in whatever way we could. Though we were disappointed with our final result, the trial and error and ideation phases of this project were both incredibly illuminating and also very fun.