Hi all,
New to the forums so thank you in advance for any insight you can provide. My wife and I love Jackfruit, and we really fell in love with it during our travels in Southeast Asia.
Every time I go to the grocery store, it kills me to never see it available, see astronomical prices, or just not find any type of variety.
Recently I keep finding myself wanting to explore a small (test) jackfruit growing operation. Since jackfruit cannot survive frost, and needs moisture, I effectively am limited to south Florida, parts of Southern California, Mexico, the Caribbean, and further south. I’m located in the north east USA and my hopes are to be able to set up a hands off operation, as jackfruit take a few years to produce.
I’ve never grown jackfruit (or really anything else for the most part). I’m hoping this forum can enlighten me in a few things including:
-where are some potential places I could do this? (I’ve explored land prices for small plots (1-5 acres) in Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and south Florida
-what are the things I need to take into account as I’m starting to explore a farm like this (I.e what equipment if any needs to be purchased, could I find a part time farmer to tend to the crops as I will not be on site, regulations I need to be aware of, rules about owning international farmland, etc)
-how much should I expect a startup of this nature to cost (equipment cost, labor, materials, etc)
-what should my timeline of expectations be? (Expect fruit in 5 years, etc)
-how could a farm of this nature be automated (if at all)?
-anything else that I need to know before pursuing this?
Thank you in advance for taking the time to review this and respond! Hope to learn a thing or two, and if it makes sense finally pull the trigger on this.
Cheers!
RD