Cost per Kilo: Simple Accounting for Lettuce Farms
Cost per Kilo: Simple Accounting for Lettuce Farms Cost per kilo hydroponic lettuce is the number that decides whether a farm reaches year two, and most farms do not calculate it until a buyer asks for a fixed price. The model is not complicated: add up what a cycle costs, divide by what it packed, […]
Checking Shipping Documents: Packing List, Invoice and B/L
Checking Shipping Documents: Packing List, Invoice and B/L A shipping documents check export routine is the last cheap control before a container leaves the factory gate. Once the vessel sails, every correction moves from a ten-minute email to an amendment fee, a storage charge, or a broker asking for a new set of papers while […]
Price Adjustment and Currency Clauses in Equipment Contracts
Price Adjustment and Currency Clauses in Equipment Contracts The price adjustment clause equipment contracts need decides your number between signing and the day the container ships. Equipment orders run long: eight to twenty weeks from deposit to loading is normal for gutter runs, racking and fabricated tanks, and resin, steel and freight all move inside […]
Supplier Scorecards: Rating Vendors After Delivery
Supplier Scorecards: Rating Vendors After Delivery A supplier scorecard template turns the messy memory of a delivery into a number you can act on. Most buyers audit a factory before the first order, then rely on impressions afterwards: the gutters arrived late, one pallet was short, the drawings took three rounds. None of that reaches […]
Freight Insurance and Damage Claims on Equipment Orders
Freight Insurance and Damage Claims on Equipment Orders Cargo insurance equipment shipment cover is bought in one line on a quotation and tested months later, in a port, with a container that arrived wet. The cover itself is rarely the problem; the claim file is. Underwriters pay on documents: what was declared, what was photographed […]
Incoterms for Equipment Orders: FOB, CIF and DDP Compared
Incoterms for Equipment Orders: FOB, CIF and DDP Compared Incoterms for equipment orders decide three things before a single carton moves: who pays for each leg, who carries the risk on each leg, and who handles the paperwork. FOB, CIF, DAP and DDP are the four terms in most hydroponic equipment quotations, and the difference […]
A Weekly Labour Calendar for Trellised Vine Crops
A Weekly Labour Calendar for Trellised Vine Crops A vine crop labour schedule is what keeps a trellised tomato or cucumber crop from drifting: the same tasks, in the same order, at the same interval, every week. Farms that lose yield to labour rarely lose it for want of hands. They lose it because pruning […]
Transplant Shock and Hardening Off Before Planting Out
Transplant Shock and Hardening Off Before Planting Out Transplant shock seedlings are not sick, they are short of water. A plug raised in a propagation room has roots working in a small, wet volume at low EC; moved into a slab, the same roots must pull from a larger, drier, saltier volume under higher light. […]
Damping Off and Poor Germination: A Propagation Triage
Damping Off and Poor Germination: A Propagation Triage A propagation room rarely fails all at once. The first signal is a tray with gaps where seedlings should be, then a second tray where upright seedlings pinch at the base and fall within a day. Called damping off by growers, that pattern is one of several […]
How to Read an LED Grow Light Spec Sheet Like a Buyer
How to Read an LED Grow Light Spec Sheet Like a Buyer Two quotes can list the same wattage and the same claimed output, then differ by twenty percent in the light that reaches the canopy over five years. The gap sits in the lines most buyers skip on an led grow light spec sheet: […]