Thoughts on buying 1.3 acres of commercial greenhouses?

Hello Permies!

In our town, the owner of the local garden shop is retiring soon, and we're thinking about acquiring his property (and business?). It's 1.3 acres of land mostly covered by greenhouses, plus a garage and sales room. Historically, this land has been used for agricultural purposes for over 300 years. We live in the French countryside in an area of France that is slowly losing population.

Would you be willing to share your ideas on this? We would be truly grateful to you for your thoughts!
For context: I'm new to permaculture, agriculture, and all things homesteading, though I've been a backyard and balcony gardener for 15 years.

Here's what is on the land today:
The existing garden business sells to B2C and B2C, with most of their revenue coming from contracts with local towns to supply them with flowers, trees and shrubs. He has largely moved away from being a nursery, and is primarily a reseller for shrubs, trees, flowers, indoor plants, some vegetable plants and some gardening equipment. 2/3 of the greenhouses are nearly empty, with some equipment filling the space. The remaining 1/3 is rented to a local nonprofit that hires unemployed people and disabled people, who are growing tomatoes, strawberries and endives above ground in a kind of chest-height irrigation system.

There are two types of greenhouse on the land:
- One with a concrete floor and a system for heating this floor with tubes of heated water that are in the concrete. The ceilings are very high and are on an automatic system for ventilating when it's hot and closing up when it's raining. The huge gas furnace is not running any more because of the cost of gas, and because certain elements of the system are broken (some above-ground water tubes connecting the furnace to the underground tubes, and some of the overhead air-heat distributors).

- The other type of greenhouse has a dirt floor that they've covered with huge thick plastic tarps. The ceilings are lower and there isn't any heating in this type of greenhouse. These dirt-floor greenhouses cover perhaps a third of the 1.3 acres.

Here are the market conditions:
- There is another (more modern and commercial) garden shop in our small town of 3000 people, and it's likely most people go there for their gardening tools and seedlings and such. The next closest garden shop is over 30 minutes away by car.
- Nobody in our town is doing any kind of gardening activities (for kids or adults). Such as: learning how to build one's own planter from salvaged materials, or learning how to create one's own compost system, or a simple activity for kids to make their own herb garden.
- There are a few organic (certified and not-certified) vegetable producers within a 30-minute radius. They are run as nonprofits with some volunteers and subsidized workers. The certified producers sell their vegetables to the organic store in town. The owner of our local organic store is a friend of mine, so I wouldn't want to be in competition with her.
- The town and the region is more poor than other regions. Our small down has a lot of poor and working-class people.
- Most people here do not care about organic or regenerative or permaculture. The majority of local farmers are not interested in this approach, and the local people try to support their farmer friends. The local farmers are primarily large monoculture farmers producing wheat, corn, canola, soy, barley.

The reasons why we are thinking of buying this property:
- There is a need to create local food sources due to climate change and other environmental concerns. Who knows when the next crisis will cause food shortages, so we like the idea of being prepared and helping our local community be more prepared.
- It is adjacent to our property, and 100 years ago the two parcels were one. We like the idea of reuniting the land.
- There's something else, less clear, pushing us toward this... More of a feeling. Hard to describe.

Our (possibly ignorant/idealistic) idea for what we think we might do with the land:
- Create a cooperative (legal status) and buy the land and business with a group of local people.  Note: in France this legal status would help us get a kind of public-sector sticker (certificate?) that prioritizes us for government contracts (public procurement). An alternative would be to start a nonprofit, also giving us access to this sticker/certificate.
- Follow B-Corp standards to eventually get certified, giving us access to contracts with other B-Corps.
- Keep the B2B flower contracts with the local towns - at least temporarily - to have an income immediately.  
- Go big on growing seedlings, especially for the spring, and create a buzz in the local media to help this take off.
- Identify the food crops that can be certified organic all while being grown in a concrete-floor unheated greenhouse (mushrooms and endives come to mind). Start with those crops.  
- In the 1/3 of the land where there is dirt under the tarps, remove the tarps and perhaps the top layer to remove the microplastics that are still there. Bring in manure from the local farms and add a cover crop initially to help amend the soil. Plant crops that the other local organic vegetable producers aren't growing.
- Create events (easy gardening activities, as well as workshops) for kids and for adults to bring more people to the space, creating connections with locals and building a sense of community.

Eventually maybe we would:
- Remove the concrete floor and the heating system (and the whole greenhouse structure??) to go back to growing in the dirt.
- Maybe replace the large greenhouses with a few smaller greenhouses that are heated with walls of compost-piles (inspired by this https://youtu.be/82wvDUi5UoQ)?

What would you do?
Would you buy the land and/or the business? Would you keep elements of the existing business or would you do something completely different? How would you handle the microplastics in the 1/3 of the greenhouses where the tarps have been on the ground? Would you keep the greenhouses?

All thoughts are warmly welcome! Thank you in advance!

WOW! Sounds like a huge decision!
My main concerns first off would be financial.
Would this put me deeply in debt so that I HAD to make a profit right from the start?
Is there a market for the things I want to produce.?
Can I sell to more distant markets if local markets are insufficient?
Do I have business experience?

It sounds like a wonderful opportunity, something that doesn't appear very often and might be impossible to recover if missed. I'd want to see the current owner's books first. If he is making a decent living off this business...

Having a market garden to provide local produce to groceries and restaurants appeals to me.

Is this something that is open to you?

Money is just about everything in this case. Do you have the funds to make the purchase without added income from the greenhouses?

How close are you to larger (100,000) communities, resorts, college towns, and upper end restaurants?   Just because you are beat out of the local market doesn’t mean you are out.  I have seen successful businesses based on year round tomato sales.  I have also seen successful herb based businesses.  Fresh salads come to mind as well.

I have a friend that runs a liquor store.  The competition beats him in volume.  He maintains a good supply of high end bourbon.   People come from many miles away to spend $500+ on a bottle of rare bourbon.

Not knowing your finances it is difficult to decide for you...

Throwing in a few ideas: As the place is covered, have you thought of livestock?
Rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, ...
Could potentially be combined with your growing tables, stacking functions.

Hi Tammy, what a great opportunity for you! It sounds like you may have other people to chip in and spread the purchase cost and risks? But that will also spread any profits as well.
Thinking about this from a permaculture perspective (and trying not to get too excited and say "just go for it!") Take a look at the possible resource flows - both physical (goods, soil inputs, water(!)) and social (work needed, money and time). I think water is one that you haven't mentioned that will be critical for growing undercover. Are you able to collect and store enough rain to service he tunnels, is there a cost for municipal water? I like the idea of events and workshops - what about food based ones - harvesting and cooking together?
The video was great - lots of woodchip and straw making heat for the tunnels. Do you have access to that sort of material? An alternative may be a Rocket stove or rocket mass heater - that might be good for catering events too. Have you clay soil at all for building one perhaps?
The current owner obviously has a business based on buying and reselling and doesn't actually use the greenhouses to their potential, but that means if you can put the effort in you could have the two businesses side by side and experiment a little with the new ones to see what works over time. I would be tempted to take down some of the soil based greenhouses because outdoor gardening allows more trees and fresh air, but that depends a lot on the site layout.
From a business perspective my opinion is that ones that succeed know what they do and do it well. Find your passion that people will pay for and things will work out. The only caveat is that cash flow is what kills businesses, even profitable ones, so as well as the puchase price (remember to add on any stock that he is reselling) you will need enough cash to keep going paying bills until moneys start coming back in.
Lots more I could say, but just this: it is better to regret what you have done than what you haven't.

Oh wow! Love these questions and ideas. Thank you all so much! I know this discussion is going to help clarify this project even more!

I'm hoping that by answering some of your questions, you can offer more specific advice, raise new concerns, or otherwise point me in the right direction.

Several of you mentioned the financial aspect. The short story is that currently I really don't know if/how this can work financially. I will certainly develop this further to have a more firm plan, but here are a few details:
- We don't yet know how much he wants to sell the land or business for. I know the owner a little bit, and he's a fairly reasonable guy. He's fairly honest about what's working and not working. He took me on a tour of the heating system in the greenhouses recently and shared the elements that are broken and why he doesn't run the system. I also know that sometimes he hides details in plain site (long story), so I will have to be very careful and ask a lot of questions to learn more about the quality of the business he has built.  I also know he has tried to find buyers already and he doesn't have anyone. He tried to sell the land to the town, and to other various investors and nobody wants it. He feels down to the wire because he wants to retire in 4 years and he doesn't have a plan yet.
- And I have not yet seen his books to judge whether he is making a living or not. Great suggestion to ask to see that information. Based on everything I've learned about him and his business over the past 18 months, I think that he is more than making ends meet - for France(!) - but that he's not bringing in a very high income by any stretch of the imagination.
- There are some special grants available for various economic development projects in the area, up to 20% of the purchase price if I'm not mistaken. It's specific to this region because of some government activity going on here.
- As a cooperative, with the special public sector sticker/certification, I think we might be eligible for additional grants and special loans.
- There may also be special funds for agricultural activities that we might be able to tap into.
- Also as a cooperative, there would be other people investing with us, so the risk would be distributed.

As mentioned, that also means that the profits would be distributed, and that's totally ok with me. In fact, that's what I would prefer, because I truly believe this is the business model that will keep small/locally owned companies and small towns alive. (I love this quote: "As member-owned, member-run and member-serving businesses, cooperatives empower people to collectively realise their economic aspirations, while strengthening their social and human capital and developing their communities." from the International Cooperative Alliance. https://ica.coop/en/cooperatives/facts-and-figures)

Thom Bri, you asked some excellent questions. I'm grateful for your thoughts and feedback! Thank you! Here are my answers to your questions:

Is there a market for the things I want to produce?
- I would reverse this: I'm willing to do the market research needed to find out what the gaps are in the market and fill those. I think I have the network necessary to talk to the right people to figure this out. To start with, I'm friends with the owner of the local organic store, but I'd also need to talk to the owners of local restaurants who I don't yet know.

Can I sell to more distant markets if local markets are insufficient?
- This seems doable, but would require excellent networking and sales operations. Good to keep in mind.

Do I have business experience?
- Yes and no. My background is quite varied. I was the financial manager of a nonprofit with a $2 million housing renovation budget, and a $600k operations budget. I fixed our accounting system and cleaned up our reporting to drop our external audits down from 4 weeks to 4 days. I'm good at admin efficiency and creating systems that improve everyone's experience. I have experience as a communications manager for an international nonprofit, and have a strong sense of marketing and communications. Currently, I run a small solopreneur business doing communications training for climate advocates. Fortunately my father, grandfather and mother all run their own businesses, so I have their guidance to help as well.

Anne Miller, you asked about whether having a market garden appeals to me. Yes! That's certainly a strong possible future use of this land/ these greenhouses. Thank you for reminding me that selling to restaurants is an option. It hadn't occurred to me.

John F. Dean, you shared such great ideas. Thank you! I hadn't thought about the benefits of specializing (your examples of tomatoes, bourbon, salad or herbs were helpful). That's a great suggestion, and of course I'd have to do adequate market research to know which products would fill a market gap.  

Permaculture question: is year-round tomatoes ok in the permaculture space? I know that the temps get down to freezing here, so I think we'd need to heat the greenhouses to have year round tomatoes. Unless we heat them with manure/compost, I wouldn't want to go down that path for environmental reasons. (see my last comment/question below)

You also asked a really great question about location. We are 90-minutes to 2 hours away from Troyes, Dijon, Nancy and Reims, 3 of which have well over 100,000 in population. Are those distances too far? Or would that be a suitable distance? What distance would be considered 'too far'?

Hans Muster, I had vaguely thought of having chickens, but wasn't sure how to incorporate this. Your idea of stacking functions is awesome. I am definitely open to exploring this more. Thank you for sharing this idea!

Nancy Reading, thank you so much for your encouragement, ideas and solid advice! I won't comment on every detail, because you shared so many great tips, several hidden in questions that I don't have the answers to. You asked a few questions that I wanted to briefly respond to:  
- The land has a well on it, from an underground spring. I don't know if he uses that water, or if he uses the town water supply. I don't know if he collects rain water for his plants, but I love the idea!
- Love the rocket-mass idea for catering events and possibly for heating a part of the greenhouse. I am interested in that, but also have some hesitations about heating greenhouses for environmental reasons. (see below)

So, I have a burning question about heated greenhouses in the context of permaculture. In French environmentally-friendly circles, people are quite opposed to heated greenhouses. And the French law only allows organic-labeled food to be in heated greenhouses from 21 December to 30 April every year. What is the permaculture philosophy on heating greenhouses?

Thank you all so much for your thoughts and suggestions! I'm incredibly grateful to each of you!

Hi TAmmy,

The distances you state are reasonable to me ….if they are for you.  I was thinking of a greenhouse operation that drove a circuit in a van making deliveries several times a week. …12 months a year. For them, the12 months was critical when talking with upper end restaurant chefs.   They could promise fresh greens, tomatoes, herbs, etc all year.

If you do go in this direction, remember the concept of “value added”.   Toss in a sample of a new herb you are growing…a different type of tomato..
Etc. Also “never trust the count”. That is you want to be ready for the customer who says “ I know I ordered two dozen, but I really need three dozen”. Then of course, there will be the customer who insists he ordered four when you know he said 3.

What do you do with the extras at the end of the day if they won’t last until the next delivery?  Give them to a quality customer ….a customer you are courting….or a food bank.

Heating is transforming calories (if from gas, fossil ones) to extend a growing season, and produce other, edible calories. How many more calories can you produce with heating?

The conventional approach is to check if the $$$ or €€€ you put in is compensated by the $$$$ or €€€€ you get out. The ecological approach, is if the calories you put in are more than compensated by the calories you get out.

Often, with the conventional approach, producing a high-value crop is grown, especially one out-of-season (when the price is high). When following ecological principles, the approach is more to grow a crop which is better suited for the climate.

Another brain-storm for the greenhouse: would a "restaurant in the jungle" work for your conditions? You could produce part of the crop yourself, and reserve a greenhouse area for a nice dining room with an exotic feeling. If you are a cooperative, you could cover different aspects, in a circular economy way.

Tammy Mayer wrote:

So, I have a burning question about heated greenhouses in the context of permaculture. In French environmentally-friendly circles, people are quite opposed to heated greenhouses. And the French law only allows organic-labeled food to be in heated greenhouses from 21 December to 30 April every year. What is the permaculture philosophy on heating greenhouses?  

If the tubing running through the floor(s) is intact, you could have some sort of biomass heating that uses sustainably acquired energy. Think forestry "waste" and crop residues, like prunings and thinnings from vineyards. An RMH design could be adapted to this purpose, but you could also look at a pyrolysis reactor that makes biochar and uses the spare thermal energy to heat the greenhouses.

For the greenhouses, it seems like a good idea to focus on crops that suit the existing structures. If you can, try to use the already-available resources like the concrete greenhouse for something like mushrooms or endives.