Farmer verses buisness man

Ok, i am in a odd situation, i am young farmer that has growen up with my very old style grandpa (81), but like OBF i see the need for marketing borads and such as mom has worked in the AG industry for the last 25+ years, with a minor in Bio and major in home economics (wired combo i know...) and i would like to get my major in plant breeding (four year course). So i know that farmers have a house to pay for, grain to buy/produce.

I sold chicken for 2.25/lb low yes but a farmer up the road sells hers for 3.50/lb i still made 4-6 per bird after buying the feed, having them butched (gov. inspected) it's not a whole lot of profit but i was able to build several new pens for breeders. Of which i plan to start breeding my own line of meat chicken ( heheh should be fun!) Also i have a market garden.

I spent ohh a good 300 on seeds but that 300 planted 1.5-2 acres of market garden. We sell five pounds of spuds for 2.50-3.00, we sell a bag of beans (don't weigh them just what ever we can get in a 2lb bag) for 2 bucks so it works out to be about 2 bucks per pound, but by selling them per bag and not per pound we are able to get more money and more bags (), we pick ohh 4 5 gallon buckets full of beans and get anywheres from 40-80 bags of beans. This year i planted royal burgendy beans just because i wanted to see if they well sell to most of the older people that stop by the stand. I think that i could sell them for more but why we are making money so why. Mind you my over head is not that much.....

Uno, I completely hear you, I absolutely detest our marketing boards. They are especially destructive to the Elmers of the world. Unfortunately, if we cannot police ourselves and maintain market minimums that support a healthy Canadian lifestyle, marketing boards become a necessary evil.

I personally try to distance my products as far from the marketing board products as possible. Want nothing to do with them and feel it is foolish to think a smallholder can build a sustainable business growing commodity products. The food factories have deeper pockets and are holding al the cards. We stay away from the marketing board genepools and stick to heritage seeds and poultry. We pick products and niches that we know the food factories cannot compete with.

Each season seems to bring a new wave of customers to the market that have become distrustful of the mainstrean food supply. We have found it very advantageous to have products that are easily distinguished from the mainstream.

Call Ducks, what kind of wage do you earn for all the hours you have invested in your 1.5-2 acres? We have a little less than that planted for an organic market garden ourselves. I know from first hand experience that there is a tremendous amount of labour involved, are you including that in your overhead costs? If you got sick/injured, could you hire someone to do the work and still maintain a profit? Does your pricing structure allowing you to pay enough to attract quality workers? I know we are not yet there, but feel any sustainable farm should be able to say yes to these questions. It is a goal we strive for.

As for the meat birds, considering all the hidden costs, it looks like you grew them at a loss. There is the cost of supplies, electricity, water. There is your labour. Your time and fuel of transporting them to slaughter and picking up chicks. Many fail to consider the expense of transporting the feed to the farm. Then there is wear and tare on infrustructure, feeders, waterers, etc. On top of all this, there is the damage to neighborly relations by undercutting them? Did you really make enough to justify such a loss?

FWIW, your produce prices are lower than our grocery store prices? Why would anyone want to undercut the grocery store? Their food is crap compared to the fresh local produce we offer. Their pricing structure is based upon a Mexican wage structure, why would we want to be working for Mexican wages? I'm only interested in those customers willing to support a Canadian wage by being willing to pay more for a premium local product.

At the end of the day, we probably put about the same number of hours into our respective gardens, but going by the pricing you offered, I'm making about 3 times what you are making.

"I live in a more rural area we simply trade back and forth zero dollars are transferred. Does this make me guilty of undercutting other folks who sell at the weekly farmers market? "

why would it? trading usually involves trading equal value for equal value.

I trade eggs for grass clippings. Some may consider grass clippings to be waste, but it is a valuable resource for me. I consider how much time I would have to spend harvesting those grass clippings and feel I'm getting exceptionally good value for my eggs.

If my eggs have a base value of $5, Id rather give a customer 3 dozen eggs in exchange for 1 hour of decent labor. I feel Id get more value from that than what the money will buy me. The sheer waste of human energy that is locked up in our landfills and in the bank accounts of corporations is staggering.

For the chickens i had little to no over head, and yes i did factor everything in. Consdering i got eggs for free and was incubating any ways.

As for the market garden, yes it is a lot of work, but we don't have tractor (just brrow a friends and give him stuff for using it) and then we buy second hand tillers never any new ones so thats 250 bucks and we get five years out of them, we bought a rear tine one last summer and put a new engine on that. We try to plant crops that are less invloved, such as sqasuh we make at least 1500 off them every year, and the time we invest in them might be 5 hours, and again with spuds plant them hill them twice-three times hours invested may be as much as 10 i am sure we get 500-750lbs of them every year. Sure the prices are cheap, and i have been told so but we put them up every year.

Cucumbers are another crop, plant them (three times this year.....) weed them twice (or untill they get growing) and after that the time of picking. I am sure we sold 1000 cumbers lastyear, time of picking a 5 gallon buckket would be about 5-7.5 min

I am learning here, now need advice from you. As my eggs cost me next to nothing to produce I sell for $2 and feel good and sell all I have. Not wanting to drag everyone down to my level I raised my price so as not to make you look bad. I went to the farmers market with 30 dozen eggs priced at $3.50 I came home with 30 dozen eggs. Did I make more money by raising my price? What do I do with the 30 dozen eggs? Can I feed them to my pigs and then raise the price of my pigs because now they are eatting more expensive food?

The problem is most likely that in the past you have set a precedent, eggs are now $2, same trouble around here. While others near me can sell for higher, our clients max out at $3, after that plenty of old farmers to get eggs from so...
Another factor that may help you is added value. Maybe the public thinks an egg produced with little or no inputs isnt worth much. Maybe if they know that they were washed, sterilized, candled, coated with mineral oil, placed in new cartons proper labeled, maybe then the perception that we get something for nothing will start to fade and we can all get premium price for premium product. I don't welcome even more efforts to achieve this end, but maybe in the end it could be demand far exceeds any one persons capacity to supply resulting in $10 eggs. I've seen other products do a "snowball effect" but the product has to be the very best quality without question.

lazyfarmer wrote:I am learning here, now need advice from you. As my eggs cost me next to nothing to produce I sell for $2 and feel good and sell all I have. Not wanting to drag everyone down to my level I raised my price so as not to make you look bad. I went to the farmers market with 30 dozen eggs priced at $3.50 I came home with 30 dozen eggs. Did I make more money by raising my price? What do I do with the 30 dozen eggs? Can I feed them to my pigs and then raise the price of my pigs because now they are eatting more expensive food?

A $1.50 price increase in 1 week is going to produce some sticker shock. I would have recommended a slower approach. Here's one idea.

At the market, what is the lowest price you are competing against? Go 50 cent more. The low baller can't supply the whole market, and therefore those who arrive a bit later will still have to buy your eggs. Even if they say no this week, as a reaction to the price increase, they will eventually run out of eggs and have to buy them from some place. Why not you? If I was in your shoes, I would look at the other prices at the market and shoot for the middle ground. In time, you will get back to selling out. And when you do, you can tell the person 50 cents lower than you that they are throwing away 50 cents a dozen.

We did this with asparagus to bring the market up to a proper price. At our market, nobody produces enough to meet demand. Our best competitor was selling for about 1/2 proper retail. She was even lower than the the Mexican junk in the grocery store! Crazy. We couldn't sell proper retail without looking like our prices were completely out to lunch. So we went $1 a bundle more. Some markets we would sell out as fast as the other. When we showed her how much money she was throwing away, she raised her prices to match ours. Next year, we again went $1 per bundle more than her. Again, we all sold out and she eventually raised her price to match ours. Now this year we all enjoyed proper retail prices. It took time, but we are in this for the long haul.