I could be missing something, but every crop you unlock (at least up to rice since that's where I'm at) is worse than pumpkins. There's zero reason to grow anything besides radishes for instant profits, and pumpkins for bigger payouts. By multiplying the amount of crops produced (x) per harvest by the amount you make per unit (y) and dividing that total by the amount of turns needed to produce (z), you can calculate the cost efficiency of each crop ( (x*y)/z )
In order of most to least efficient, we have:
Pumpkins at $90/turn
Radishes at $80/turn
Rice at $75/turn
and Cabbages at $62.50/turn
Why are later game crops so bad? Were numbers just picked at random, or is there an issue in the code? I've also just taken a look at an order from the Farmers Cooperative for the first time. The order calls for:
43 Radishes
30 Pumpkins
28 Cabbage
71 Rice
(UPDATE - the following information is entirely incorrect, but I'm keeping it here for context. Please ignore my absolutely wrong math and see my revisions in the sub-comments. The Cooperative is very lucrative)
with a payout of $922.20... which if I sold each of those crops at their normal price per unit would be a loss of $5738.16 since the total after taxes and renown would be $6660.36. I'm not even going to attempt to complete this order without a guarantee that the payout is $922 PER UNIT and not the total of the order.
Your math is way, way off on the cooperative. Since you don't pay tax on cooperative orders it is categorically better than selling those items individually. It is 2-5 times as time efficient to complete cooperative orders than to just sell crops. That said, it can be annoying to build up the supplies for cooperative orders initially. Late game crops, imo exist entirely as a way to complete cooperative orders and cooperative orders are extremely good for money making, probably the best in the game. Cheese is easier though imo once you have it unlocked for steady funding at least.
If you had sold the crops for your order individually your actually received price per unit is around $2.94 per unit after tax. Selling to the cooperative for that order gives you a whopping $5.36 per unit - basically double. Once you complete your first cooperative order and can continue to grow crops on a rotation, you will be rich for the rest of the game.
I got lucky while double checking this and got an order for 25 radishe to further prove this point, the order was:
25 Radishe for 127.75. If you just sold 25 Radishe (ignoring that this isn't actually possible in-game since you have to sell in batches of 100) you would receive around $25 total after tax (assuming $2 per unit and tax of around 50% which is where it is in my game) or $1.00 per unit. Selling to the cooperative is around $5.11 per unit - more than 5 times as much. I'm too lazy to do the per-turn calculations but the cooperative is probably always around 2 times as efficient, at a minimum, for the number of crops sold and as such will always be the best way to make money.
After a short review, you're absolutely right, my math for the cooperative wasn't even close. I would've made a profit of $193.56 if I'd sold for the cooperative value over the individual value. I think I initially figured all that up super late at night, but looking at it now you're 100% correct - the cooperative is decently lucrative and late game crops seems to be intended specifically for it. That said, I do feel that cabbage at the very least should be worth more since you unlock it long before the cooperative becomes an option
No worries, just didn't want you stuck trying to make money with low-efficiency methods since that would slow down progression a bit for some of the "big-ticket" items you need to buy in-game if you had not already done so.
Agreed that some of the baseline crops could possibly get some adjustments although maybe they will get some type of alternative use later in the game. You would think the girls would need a specialized diet or something to increase their milk quality or quantity or something. Cheers.