Sebastian River Farms (SRF) is a wholesale tree farm with approximately 300 acres

on Florida's east coast near Vero Beach (USA).

Forecasting yearly sales at this company was discussed in Chapter 3. In this
exercise, the decisions related to planting new trees and
managing inventory are covered. The farm grows over 75 different varieties of trees
and shrubs. The farm has approximately 121,000 trees.
About 31,000 are mature trees that are available for sale. The other 90,000 are
“growing” which can take from two to three years,

depending on the type.

Pot” grown
trees are much more convenient for selling to the over 200 landscaping and tree
supply companies that SRF sells to throughout Florida.

Although some of the trees are planted in the ground and grown from small twigs,
most are grown in 15-and 30-gallon pot:

On an ongoing basis the company evaluates current inventory and makes decisions
about what to plant. The farm has a team of
hardworking people who prepare the planting pots, plant the trees. and then set up
the irrigation pipes that are needed to water each tree
every day. Maintaining and pruning (shaping) over the growth period is a daily task
that is needed to grow top-quality trees.

Much of the cost associated with growing and maintaining involves the workers
employed by the farm. The team operates like a big family.
First priority is loading trucks that deliver trees to customers, and much of this
work is done in the early morning during the week.
Planting is generally done during slack periods and on weekends by the team. From a
cost view, it would be possible to allocate the labor
cost to different activities, but this is not currently done by the farm
accountant.