By Megan Stoker
Corn mazes are not only quickly becoming a premier fall entertainment, they''re also a big money maker for farmers.
'On a normal farm basis you may make $100 to $200 dollars an acre per crop,' said Stan Smith, owner and operator of Big Foot Corn Maze. 'In a good corn maze however, you can yield up $5,000 an acre.'
As with all agriculture-based business, corn mazes are not a sure thing. According to a report on MSNBC, a typical farmer may spend as much as $25,000 to $100,000 having their mazes professionally designed and cut out, while profits remain uncertain.
'You can make $50,000 or loose $50,000 it just depends,' said Brett Herbst, owner of the Utah based maze company, The MaiZE. 'Weather is a big determinant, when it''s rainy, not a lot of people come to the mazes. It also depends on what kind of businessman the owner is. A maze is a business and some people are just not good businessmen.'
According to the Center for Profitable Agriculture, typical start-up costs for a corm maze is $12,260 while annual operating costs are usually $12,572. This means that maze owners need a minimum of 10,478 admissions to break even.
'In the U.S. there are about 160 mazes,' Smith said. 'Some mazes may only see 2,000 people and others may see about 20,000 to 40,000 people, it just depends on the quality of the maze.'
Herbst said advertising and marketing campaigns are also key in the success of the maze.
One way to cover costs and boost profit is the sell the corn after the season is over, Smith said.
'At the end of the season you have three options, you can sell the corn for grain corn, you can turn it into a crop for animal feed, or you can turn the animals into the field and let them eat it down,' Smith said. ' would make them break even, and they''ll still have the profit from the maze.'
Originating in the United States, 'agritainment' is quickly becoming a worldwide phenomenon, with mazes popping up all over North America and Europe.
'I''ve designed mazes in United States and Canada, also over in the United Kingdom and Italy,' Herbst said.
Typically, professional corn maze designers create corn mazes on a grid computer program. Afterward, the maze owners cuts the design into their fields.
'There''s two ways you can make a corn maze,' Smith said. 'Typically the first thing you do is you plant the corn in it''s normal fashion, than after the corn comes up you can poison the corn where you want the trails to be or you can wait until the corn is grown and cut the maze out.'
Hurst''s company, The MaiZE, was founded in 1996 based on an idea by English maze builder Adrian Fisher and American theme park producer Don Frantz. To date, Herbst has designed over 600 mazes worldwide with 160 designed this year.