Are grapes worth the effort?

[WildDogsGaming]

So my ignorance has killed my enthusiasm, LOL. I decided to put down grape vines near the grape factory and purchased it. I put the grapes on 56, and 57. $1.6 million to plant. First, putting down that many vines is a pain. Holy cow, that was a pain. Get that done, following the instructions at the tutorial website Giants provided, I went ahead and used the cultivator, except out of all those rows, I only got 5 rows completed. Saved the game, left.

When I got back in the game, the tractor was still in the 5th row, but where the ground before was showing where I cultivated, everything was back to full green. Then I pass the day. In 1 day/month, grass was extremely high. Go pick up the orchard mulcher, and I just spent 6 actual hours mulching the grape fields. Can't hire a worker to do it. I am afraid to pass the day again, because I do not want to put another 6 hours mulching again.

So in the end, is all this effort worth it? Or am I better off starting a new map? I have what, 5 months before I am able to harvest this? I don't think I have spent this much time doing 1 task, and I have played FS since the beginning, lol. So I guess my question is, is this worth the effort I have put into it, and it looks like I have to put into it?

[WildDogsGaming]

OK, so my TLDR: No, grapes are not worth the effort.

OK, just finished my first grape season. Let's first calculate the time I have put into them.

I fertilized the ground first before placing the grapes, and I think I used AI for both fields so I could do other things, so it won't be taken into consideration. All the time below is time I spent doing the stuff, because the only thing the AI was capable of was cultivating, and that it didn't do well.
Place the grapevines: 2 hours-ish.
Cultivate the grapevines 4 hours.
Mulch the grapes 6 hours.
Fertilize 2nd time: 3 hours
Harvest the grapes: 4 hours
Prune the leaves: 4 hours

Total time for initial season: 23 actual hours. I am just guessing here, but except for placing the grapevines, everything else has to be done every year. So take away 2 hours for placing the grapevines, add in the extra fertilizer to get it to 100%, 24 hours every year. Yes, 24 hours, seriously. Yes, I built them large.

OK, so what do you get for that 24 hours of you actually working? Again, AI doesn't do any of it but one thing, so you are the one doing it, or you and your friends.

So this first harvest, I got a total of 95,316 grapes.

I sold 46,070 to golden valley because it was the highest price, made a total of $112,726. Let's just call it $2.45 each grape.

I stored 49,246 in my grape factory to make raisins and juice. If I had sold them, it would have made me $120,652.70.

I know it isn't completely accurate, but let's make the assumption that when you turn a product into another, you make double the price. It has been what I have seen with all the other products I have played with so far. I guess I could have looked to see what juice and raisins are being sold for. Let's just call it $250,000 is what the products will sell for.

Then you also have to account for the fact that both Raisins and Juice only produce 2/hour, and they cost $5/hour to produce it, so it costs $2.50 each to produce it.

All in all, 23 hours of my time was spent on nothing but grapes, and me doing the actual work. In all that effort, I made $370,000. I spent $1.5 million to plant the grapes, and about $500,000 is the equipment to be used on the orchard. So $2 million investment. Assuming all the income remains the same, it will take 6 years to make my money back, and that ignores maintaining the equipment costs, and gas, etc.

It has been a fun experiment, but I do not think I will ever again do grapes. 23 hours on 1 product is more time than I have ever spent on any particular project in farming simulator since it first came out, and any of the farming games before or after that I have played. In 24 hours gameplay, if I had normal fields going, and spending let's pretend, 2 hours a day, I would have advanced 12 days in this time frame, which is 3 years. I would have made a lot more money in wheat, canola, etc in my 24 hours, especially since 2 hours a day is really high for most days for me. That is max, not normal.

[Simeta]

I play with a guy who likes to do the production stuff, so I do grapes just to produce enough to keep the factory running but for the whole process i think its not worth it.

[Gage]

you can up the production of factories, im currently doing cotton at 125% of what it started at and it seems to be doing better.

[Hiltz]

How can you up the production of factories?

[Gorf2010]

There's a greenhouse mod for grapes and olives. They need more stuff than the vanilla greenhouses but way less work ... and the grapes and olives are produced on pallets