Starter Kit. Idea 491 of 500. Cluster 27
Fruit-tree nurseries selling grafted saplings of the named varieties, with a guarantee that the tree is what the label says
The mechanism, from the book
Fruit the world wants, sold in a heap by the road. Grading, a name and a cold box make the heap an export and the season a reason to visit.
The first step
Learn grafting from a nursery or an agriculture officer, and choose two named varieties with a parent tree you can trace. Graft a first batch, label each sapling with its variety and its parent tree, and give a written guarantee that it is what the label says. Sell them to home gardeners and small farmers. The proof is buyers coming back for more.
- Who pays first
- A home gardener or small farmer who has bought a sapling before that turned out not to be what the seller said.
- What leaves today
- Saplings are sold on the seller's word; a guarantee lets buyers plant the named varieties with confidence, and pay more for them.
Ask first
- Department of Agriculture. Ask whether a nursery selling grafted saplings must register, and how a variety is confirmed.
Check before you spend
Confirm the nursery's registration, a parent tree for each variety that can be checked, labels that cannot be swapped, and what the guarantee promises.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a buyer pay for a guaranteed grafted sapling?
- How many grafts can one parent tree supply each year?
- How many grafts take out of each batch?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"None of that is a value. All of it can be checked."
A guarantee anyone can check is worth more than a seller's word.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.