the real cost of food

[Kristin]

I stayed up late last night reading this piece (instead of watching the final presidential debate) and can’t stop thinking about it this morning. Here’s a link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

We are in the middle of trying to set our price for next year’s share, and so I’m thinking a lot about the value of food, what it costs to produce it, what people are willing to pay for it. Pollan attacks the old commodity subsidy system here, but I feel like he misses the root of the problem: we all have been duped into undervaluing food. It is artificially cheap, even as prices in the grocery store rise. In America, we pay a lower percentage of our income for food than any people at any point in history, and it turns out that that’s not a good thing, but a bad one. For everyone. Including (especially) the poor. As a culture, we need to refigure what it costs to eat, and get used to paying more.

If we were to set our price ‘fairly,’ with everyone who works at the farm making a decent wage (and I’m not even talking about a middle class wage, just a decent working class wage), the share price would be outrageous. (When we figure out that number, I’ll post it here.) Or, at least it would seem outrageous to people used to cheap food. I think that’s one of the dirty little secrets of small scale organic agriculture. A lot of it is based on the cheap or free labor derived from interns or apprentices. It bothers me, because it perpetuates a system that is based on a false economy, and it’s not fair. Yes, we’re training farmers, but we’re training them to rely on cheap or free labor. What do you all think?

Forgive me if that sounded like a rant. I think I may have had too much coffee this morning.

-Kristin

[Carl Russell]

Kristin,
I agree completely with your comments. I have never seen my objective as trying to find a market for my farming enterprise beyond my own table, primarily because I don’t believe anybody else will value the food I produce as much as I do.

That being said, we always produce more than we can use, so we sell the surplus. Generally it is not difficult for us to find customers, first because it is not large volumes, and second because there ARE folks (although not many) who value the way we produce our food.

We have run into the pricing problem when evaluating existing common prices, and when selling at Farmer’s Markets. It has amazed me how willing some farmers are to undersell themselves, as if they owe it to their customers.

For several years we have planted garlic and potatoes to sell at FM. We plant garlic in fall, and potatoes early, so they are both ready for sale by June- early July. Trying to price these roots, we considered what others were selling them for, as we tried to calculate our expenses.

The best I could do was $1-$2 above anybody else. Then it occurred to me that ours were the only produce that was grown by horse and hand, and in ground that has been worked that way for over 20 years. In other words, there was no point in trying to compete, and we set our prices high, and advertised our commitment to our cultivation process.

I know that does get shares sold each week, year round, but I just wanted to throw that into the discussion.

Carl

[jen judkins]

Since buying my small farm 3 years ago, I have progressively made efforts to grow/raise my own food in bigger increments. The rest I try very hard to buy as close to home as possible. I expect to pay more for food raised/grown in a sustainble/natural fashion. I don’t know where that expectation comes from, as I have no idea if a potato sown in earth plowed by a horse is more expensive to grow than one on a mass market conventional potato farm. I guess for me the value comes from several areas…one is the importance of supporting my neighbors and my community, another is my own belief that small scale sustainable organic farming makes for better food…taste better, better for you and its better for the earth. But maybe more important to me is the idea that I don’t have to buy into the negative vibrational energy I associate with mass produced food. I don’t value that way of ‘farming’ and am happy to have an alternative, albeit more expensive.

I’ve toyed with the idea of selling some of my excess the FM or in a roadside stand and I’ve often thought that I would include in the price of eggs or produce, an educational flyer that explains why my food might cost more….how I use my land and why its important and why the food is more valuable because of those things.

Lets face it, it is the mass produced food markets that have run down the price of food (artificially) and now that there is pressure on markets to raise prices, the small farmer is in a better position to compete. So I guess my point is that, Kristen, sell your produce for what it is worth and educate your customers. I would not be happy to find that my CSA farm was relying on free or cheap labor to grow my food. In fact I believe its in my own best interest to make sure the folks in my neighborhood are successful and sustainable.

Americans have grown accustomed to fast, cheap food. Kids no longer know where their food comes from or what it takes to grow/raise/hunt/gather. So its no wonder food has become undervalued. I believe (have to believe) the world is turning and things will change. When I see the rates of childhood obesity and early onset diabetes in our culture, I cringe at the medical costs 10 or 20 years down the road. It scares me, really. But I see change through the murky future, one family at a time. All the food scares may be a blessing in disguise, as it forces people to look at where their food comes from. Even the most mainstream of supermarkets has a section for local food now….a promising sign I hope.

Interesting topic, Kristin….thanks for posting. Jennifer.

[ngcmcn]

Hey Kristin, I want to know what Jet’s cut is? Nah, just joking.

I would raise your prices. We got into a debate here in central maine with some other small milk producers. They said “we want to price our products to match Oakhurst’s (Supermarket) pricing” Their intent, you see, was to keep their product competitive for the “average” consumer (dare I say Joe the Plumber)…..we said “No Way. It ain’t apples for apples.”

Baseline, everything has gone up. You can’t buy dollar-a-bale hay any more, even if it’s mulch. I think we all still use gas, not matter how important the horses are. Grain, fertility, animals….

The bottom line is that good food is worth the money. And I think, when it comes down to it, it’s not that expensive. What;s expensive is the effort, skill, and time required to prepare it. If we’re willing to put the time in and learn to prep food, we can eat 100 times better for the same price as processed conventional food–even now.

I’ve been thinking about an article that I read recently that looked at the effect of rising energy costs on the value of human energy. So, for example, it pointed out that as gas prices go up, it will make a lot more sense for people to work less at a job, more at home. If the wage that we earn in a job pays for less and less of the resources that we need to get there (food, gas, time not spent preparing food, mending, building shelter, splitting wood), then the relative value of those other things goes up.

I think the same applies to food. As the real energy costs of food become more apparent, the value of local food will become obvious–even in the strict economic sense. Shipping food thousands of miles does have costs.

Anyway, I need to go use some of that valuable labor to process today’s milk… It seems that Central Maine residents are not yet on the same page with us, because there are probably 10 gallons of milk in the sales fridge. We’ll be selling pork in the spring! I certainly don’t have the answer, but wanted to share some thoughts, for what they’re worth. We know our work is valuable, we need to get paid for what it’s worth. And if not, as Carl said, this food may just be more valuable to us than to our customers for a while yet.

Where’s the middle ground for you? How do you make that call, about when it is not worth selling one more share? It may sound greedy, but what we strive for is to be selling as little as we can, for as much as we can, while keeping our quality of life. We know if we were really greedy, we would be doing something other than milking cows, driving horses, raising kids, cooking, preserving… and getting up and doing it again.

Gwyneth & Neal

[Carl Russell]

ngcmcn;3060 wrote:

………

Anyway, I need to go use some of that valuable labor to process today’s milk… It seems that Central Maine residents are not yet on the same page with us, because there are probably 10 gallons of milk in the sales fridge. We’ll be selling pork in the spring! I certainly don’t have the answer, but wanted to share some thoughts, for what they’re worth. We know our work is valuable, we need to get paid for what it’s worth. And if not, as Carl said, this food may just be more valuable to us than to our customers for a while yet.

Where’s the middle ground for you? How do you make that call, about when it is not worth selling one more share? It may sound greedy, but what we strive for is to be selling as little as we can, for as much as we can, while keeping our quality of life. We know if we were really greedy, we would be doing something other than milking cows, driving horses, raising kids, cooking, preserving… and getting up and doing it again.

Gwyneth & Neal

Hey you guys, what are you selling your milk for? We are getting $6/gal and $8/qt for cream. Selling about 3 gal per day=$18 (we get 4-4.5/day). That figures out to 1hr/day milking and related chores($15) + 1-2 hr/wk fencing/moving cows (.3 hrs/day=$5) and a yearly average of some grain and a little hay of about $3/day, minus our own gallon (-$6)= 15+5+3-6=$17

This doesn’t take into consideration long term costs of water tanks, fencing, nor the value of nutrients, and grass management, nor those unscheduled emergency sleepless nights, nor the great connections we make with interesting people who come to our farm and make us feel good about what we do. I also didn’t figure the cost of refrigeration (we’re still using the fridge my folks bought when they lived in Texas in the fifties), hot water, but realistically those costs are covered from our share of the income as personal expenses.

We could probably raise that price, because our customers are dedicated, but we probably won’t, because our customers are dedicated.

When the cows are dry we buy milk from our neighbor for $2 gal out of their bulk tank. Same price for the last 20 years.

Carl

[Robin]

Hi folks, I’m down here in Orange County, NY. I buy from the local farmers as much as I can. Right now I am paying $4.00 per gallon for raw milk, cream not available. If I need cream, I take it off the top of the container. We make butter with it from time to time.
I am paying $2.75 a doz.for eggs, direct from the farm. Free range chickens.
Both places are pretty much self service. The dairy needs to know your order ahead of time. Your order is in a container, in refrig waiting for your pick-up. (Their container is + $1.00 or bring your own). They have a real nice set up. They have a small herd of Jersey cows, about 24 cows. A good part of their milk is sold direct to the public. In NYS they have to be licensed to sell raw milk.
There are several produce farmers in the region, most in the Pine Island blackdirt area. Many sell to local grocery stores.
I have been buying from the local farmers market in Goshen, NY for several years. It is one day a week on Friday. A few years ago the customers were
there, but not in great numbers. Last year the numbers increased tremendously, this year the place is packed. The “Buy Local” campaigne is really working.
Keep in mind, Goshen in the county seat, lots of day workers in town for the government and other businesses. Goshen does not have a grocery store!
The lunch hour crowd buys here every week, plus the local residents.
As I drive around the local area, the roadside stands always seem to be busy. The farm I buy my hay from is busy from 7:00AM ’til dark. They sell hay, corn, cabbage, squash, potatoes, garlic, onions, etc. all season. Hay & straw all winter.
The prices are fair, lots of good local food. I am sure the farmers will never be rich, but they can pay their bills, etc. They live a lot more conservatively than folks in other trades.
The farms are disappearing rapidly. McMansion were growing, but now that is all changed. There are bus tours to view the houses in foreclosure!
Another note, most folks from the city have no idea where their food comes from or how much work/expense is involved.

[Crabapple Farm]

@Kristin 3039 wrote:

If we were to set our price ‘fairly,’ with everyone who works at the farm making a decent wage (and I’m not even talking about a middle class wage, just a decent working class wage), the share price would be outrageous. (When we figure out that number, I’ll post it here.) Or, at least it would seem outrageous to people used to cheap food. I think that’s one of the dirty little secrets of small scale organic agriculture. A lot of it is based on the cheap or free labor derived from interns or apprentices. It bothers me, because it perpetuates a system that is based on a false economy, and it’s not fair. Yes, we’re training farmers, but we’re training them to rely on cheap or free labor. What do you all think?

I’m definately in favor of pushing the pricing issue towards a decent wage, but I also appreciate the reality of having to make sales in order to get any wage at all. I try to avoid pricing our stuff out of the range of what folks can afford. But being able to afford something is a question of assigning value and prioritizing. If someone’s got mortgage payments and car payments and credit card payments that eat up their monthly paycheck so they don’t have anything left to spend on food, well, that’s just an indication of their priorities. Let them eat cheap crap. My only qualm is the question of who is going to foot the medical bill in twenty years.

I have often wondered how many points in history there have been in which farmers have done well without relying on what amounts to free labor (be it direct slavery or fossil fuels or apprentices or children). I haven’t really been able to think of any. Which makes me feel marginally better about being dependant on cheap labor (apprentices, in our case).

I think that we are training farmers to farm sustainably, which includes a balancing of ecological, social, and economic issues. Today, the education we can offer is as valuable as the labor they can offer us. And is maybe more valuable in today’s economy than the actual product of that labor.
As soon as everyone starts doing it, then the education won’t be so valuable. But probably the product of the labor will be more valuable then (which would be the only reason everyone would start doing it).

[Plowboy]

How does a person “succeed” in small scale organic farming? To grow meat, vegetables, milk or other such products enough for your own use and enough to sell and make a living with the intense labor and increasing costs like taxes, mortgage, insurance etc. seems costs prohibitive without off farm income. Unless Grandpa gives you the farm and equipment the start up cost of stock and other essentials based on return of investment is a losing proposition just like conventional farming. Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to be negative just asking you folks to show everyone the way. I was talking to a friend yesterday at a horse auction and he told me of a conversation he had with an old farmer. He asked the old timer how he could live off the land on a small scale. The oldtimer started off ” You’ll need at least one horse, a cow, some hens, You can’t do it”. ” What” . “You can’t do it”. “Why not?”. “Because you’ll lose the farm for taxes withoutr a good product or outside income nowadays”. This is scary but true unless your working your fingers to the bone trying to scratch out a meager existence with no debt it is difficult with today’s operating costs. A mortgage alone on a sizeable acreage with house and barn in most areas is scary without a good income. If you were in a suburban area with a high traffic farm stand you might do well. My parents have a self serve farm stand on a state road. There isn’t enough business to staff the stand but because it isn’t staffed they only get paid for 50% of there produce. They are busy running a mixed power dairy farm so the stand isn’t the biggest priority during summer and fall when haying and harvesting crops to feed the cattle and horses that support the farm is more important than hanging out in the stand all day for $50 so they get $25 instead. If some of you have a plan from purchasing land to marketing crops to pay all the bills while living a comfortable life please make it known so others can follow your path to success. Again I apologize for being gloomy but these modern times are tough for the small farmer especially if they are just starting out with a mortgage. This is something we all need to consider given the current market and economy.

[Does’ Leap]

Plowboy:

My wife and I currently make two full time incomes off of our small farm. We milk 45 goats and process all the milk into a variety of fresh and aged goat cheeses. We also recently started making goat’s milk kefir (a type of drinkable yogurt). While I understand your questioning the economic viability of small scale farming, it is possible with sacrifices. We purchased 130 acres of undeveloped land for $63,000 11 years ago. We lived in a yurt for over 5 years while we built our barns, cheese facility, house etc. I taught high school for 9 years while building up the business and quit two years ago. Yes, that income helped capitalize the farm and was essential in reducing debt and enabling us to pay as we went. However, the business was also growing and contributing as well. We are now debt-free and live comfortably.

What did it take for us? Getting a good deal on land we purchased, willing to rough it for several years (yurt with no water and no electric for several years), doing everything ourselves (building, plumbing, electric, etc.), searching the country for cheap equipment that we could fix up (cheese regs are extremely strict), and working extremely hard for long periods of time (still going!). Did I mention interns? Yes, we have relied on them as well, although we are now in a position – with less projects, fence building, renovations, etc. – to wean ourselves from intern labor if we choose.

These are all aspects of the cost of running a business. On the income side, it wouldn’t have worked for us without a value-added product. For example, we could sell goat’s milk for $30 – $35 / cwt. That same milk processed into cheese and kefir averages $185 / cwt for us. Additionally, we have the power to raise our prices rather than accepting a price from a buyer. In fact, we have raised our prices twice in the past 6 months due to our rising costs (we are now paying $635/ton for organic grain!) Our customers haven’t blinked and we still don’t come close to meeting demand. Another key for us has been direct marketing 40-45% or our cheese through the Burlington Farmers Market and local CSAs. This insures we are getting top dollar for our products.

I don’t want to paint a overly sanguine picture of our farm because I would be making a lot more money and working a lot less if I continued teaching. We often work upwards of 80 hours weekly in the busy season and I bet if you calculated our hourly wage, it would be modest indeed. That being said, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

George

[OldKat]

@Does’ Leap 3075 wrote:

Plowboy:

My wife and I currently make two full time incomes off of our small farm. We milk 45 goats and process all the milk into a variety of fresh and aged goat cheeses. We also recently started making goat’s milk kefir (a type of drinkable yogurt). While I understand your questioning the economic viability of small scale farming, it is possible with sacrifices. We purchased 130 acres of undeveloped land for $63,000 11 years ago. We lived in a yurt for over 5 years while we built our barns, cheese facility, house etc. I taught high school for 9 years while building up the business and quit two years ago. Yes, that income helped capitalize the farm and was essential in reducing debt and enabling us to pay as we went. However, the business was also growing and contributing as well. We are now debt-free and live comfortably.

What did it take for us? Getting a good deal on land we purchased, willing to rough it for several years (yurt with no water and no electric for several years), doing everything ourselves (building, plumbing, electric, etc.), searching the country for cheap equipment that we could fix up (cheese regs are extremely strict), and working extremely hard for long periods of time (still going!). Did I mention interns? Yes, we have relied on them as well, although we are now in a position – with less projects, fence building, renovations, etc. – to wean ourselves from intern labor if we choose.

These are all aspects of the cost of running a business. On the income side, it wouldn’t have worked for us without a value-added product. For example, we could sell goat’s milk for $30 – $35 / cwt. That same milk processed into cheese and kefir averages $185 / cwt for us. Additionally, we have the power to raise our prices rather than accepting a price from a buyer. In fact, we have raised our prices twice in the past 6 months due to our rising costs (we are now paying $635/ton for organic grain!) Our customers haven’t blinked and we still don’t come close to meeting demand. Another key for us has been direct marketing 40-45% or our cheese through the Burlington Farmers Market and local CSAs. This insures we are getting top dollar for our products.

I don’t want to paint a overly sanguine picture of our farm because I would be making a lot more money and working a lot less if I continued teaching. We often work upwards of 80 hours weekly in the busy season and I bet if you calculated our hourly wage, it would be modest indeed. That being said, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

George

Very interesting thread. I have thought about this very subject a number of times over the years & certainly don’t have a clue as to the ultimate answer, so I guess the best I could offer is “it depends“. George makes some great points; one is what you pay for your land. Maybe that depends on where you are. Yesterday we went to homecoming at our beloved university, which is in the community near where we hope to retire. On the way home we saw two pieces of property for sale, both in the part of the county where we would like to live/farm. I called on both, no answer on the 35 acre piece. The other was a 64.8 acre piece that the owner said he would “take $6,500.0 per acre” for. If I had CASH IN HAND that is over 420 thousand dollars! (By the way, this land was in a very rural location at least 100 to 120 miles from a major city … it was not “suburban” land) I can’t think of any LEGAL crop that could make that work. I’ve got a few years left to work, and as the reality of the credit mess starts to sink in I expect prices to soften considerably around here. Enough so that I can make a buy like George did? I doubt it. Short of a complete economic collapse I can’t say if it will ever come down enough to make farming this land feasible again. I once heard that horse traders say you never make money selling horses, the money is made when you buy them; i.e. how cheaply you can buy the animal. I guess the same could be said with farmland.

It depends ,also, on what you sell your product for … as detailed in several of the posts above. I can’t add anything here, as I don’t currently have a product to sell. I do know that an Amish guy that I know has customers that drive about 50 miles to buy his raw milk (which he has no license for, so he sells it as “For pet use only”) I have no idea what he gets for it, but the market is obviously there. A guy that I went to college with was the department chair for the Agriculture & Industrial Technology Department at our alma mater for a number of years. He told me that a few years ago they had a big crop of Angus bull calves & the market had gone south. Rather than cram them into a depressed market they fed them out on corn off the university farm. He was unsure about marketing them, so he sold them as halves on the university intranet. They called them “Bearkat Beef”, after the school mascot. They stressed locally grown, no antibiotics, no crowded feedlot. They were priced out at about 50 cents a pound higher than halves sold through the local markets. They sold out in a matter of days.

I would also think that it depends on what your expectations are. Several years ago I was at conference put on by The Stockman Grass Farmer magazine. Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms was a speaker there. The crowd had been very enthusiastic about everything he had to say. He was saying that they had three families making a “middle class” income off of what amounted to about 150 acres of cultivatable land. Then someone asked what he was calling a “middle class” income. When he said”35,000 to 40,000 dollars” you could visibly see the audience deflate. They all seemed to miss several points that he had made earlier; 1) they can build homes and barns on their property at very low costs due to their sawmill operation providing most of the material required & all of the family members are handy with tools 2) his family had virtually no food bill, they raised it all themselves 3) their home heating bill was minimal because they used scrap wood from their sawmill operation to heat their homes & 4) their “other” expenses are lower. With no off farm jobs they didn’t need to budget for special clothes to wear to work, their automobiles last longer because they don’t wear them out getting to work, their gasoline bills were minimal due to the same. (Most of their customers come to the farm to buy from them) Still the audience seemed to focus only on the money in; not the whole picture, including their reduced cost of living.

As it relates to the price a product commands in the market place; I’ve seen several studies over the years that dealt with the pricing of agricultural products. While it is true that the producer has no control over the price they receive when selling in a commodity system, not so when selling to the end user … as you all know. What may surprise you is what was discovered when queried as to what marketing terminology works best. The following terms were tested; “organic” and “locally grown”. Turns out locally grown has much greater appeal to the average consumer. Organic is not bad, just not as effective.

Finally, I once worked for a firm that had a belief that we could “add value” (and therefore price) to a commodity product. They, actually we, thought that we could add enough service to the delivery side of this commodity so that the consumer would be willing to pay a premium for it. In retrospect it was a goofy concept, but we spent about 7.5 million dollars proving ourselves wrong! Bottom-line time, people WILL NOT pay a premium for a commodity. Lesson learned; if you are trying to extract a premium for your product NEVER let it be equated to a similar commodity. You MUST somehow differentiate your product in the eyes of the consumer.

[Rod]

The price of land part of this discussion brings to mind a program in Vermont and likely in other states as well that helps make affordable land available for agriculture. It’s a program where by the State buys up development rights for land and farms leaving only the use value for Ag, forestry etc left in the parcels. Thus the owner can glean the development value from his land and still sell the remaining use value and a reduced price equated to the production value of the land. It helps to realize that we never really can own land but only rights of use and subject to societies rules and regulations such as zoning, wetlands, taxes etc. As some of these rights are subtracted for the land the dollar value drops accordingly but if its a remaining use that has value for the buyer it can create good buying opportunities for some.

[Kristin]

Very thoughtful responses here from the farmer side and the consumer side. I should say that I am highly optimistic about the viability of small farms. While I do earn some outside income that is dedicated to paying off the mortgage, we are profitable, in a small way, and I expect our bottom line to improve now that many of our startup costs are behind us. I think as the culture and the economy changes, small farms are going to be in a good position. Not that we’re all going to get rich, but we’re going to be OK, and we’re going to continue having a great time doing what we love to do.

One further thought, which is something Mark and I talk about a lot. We’ve always believed that our farm will be more stable (and more fun) if we have a diverse customer base — that is, we don’t want to serve *only* our high income neighbors. We offer a sliding scale, based on what people say they can pay, no proof of income or anything like that. We’ve never said no to anyone. That means that some people who make big incomes but have a big mortgage or debt or are paying for private tuition for their kids or whatever may not be paying full price. Is that fair? I don’t know. I feel like it isn’t fair to the people who really stretch to pay our full price, because they prioritize good food over other things. This year we’re talking about putting a bottom on the sliding scale, so we aren’t actually losing money on the sliding scale shares.

When I think about subsidies, I get itchy, because from my perspective (and I recognize that others have a different perspective) it seems they’ve done a lot more harm than good. In the article I originally quoted, Pollan suggests subsidizing agricultural practices like diversified, grass based farming, rather than paying farmers to grow big volumes of commodities. The more I think about that, the more nervous I get, because I think the market would find a way to pervert it, and that subsidy money would end up in the hands of a few big farmers, just like it does now, and I really believe our country and our food system would be healthier if we had more farms, and more farmers, instead of fewer, and bigger. What if instead we were to subsidize the *consumer* side, at least until the market adjusts to paying more for food? What do you all think?

One more question. I just heard on the radio that in the 1960s, the average family spent 1/3 of their income on food. Today, it’s 1/8. I’d love to hear what percentage of their incomes people who are not producing their own food feel willing to commit to food, assuming it’s great quality food.

all best,
Kristin

[goodcompanion]

@Kristin 3039 wrote:

If we were to set our price ‘fairly,’ with everyone who works at the farm making a decent wage (and I’m not even talking about a middle class wage, just a decent working class wage), the share price would be outrageous. (When we figure out that number, I’ll post it here.) Or, at least it would seem outrageous to people used to cheap food. I think that’s one of the dirty little secrets of small scale organic agriculture. A lot of it is based on the cheap or free labor derived from interns or apprentices. It bothers me, because it perpetuates a system that is based on a false economy, and it’s not fair. Yes, we’re training farmers, but we’re training them to rely on cheap or free labor. What do you all think?

-Kristin

Kristin,

I think that this kind of compromise is just plain necessary to survive. Yes we are teaching our apprentices to rely on cheap labor, and so they must until circumstances change. But what you are doing is keeping skills and practices alive so that when they do change, you and those you have shared these skills with are prepared to be leaders.

When selling food that is, on the face of it at least, pretty comparable to what you find in stores, we can’t do much to mark up our food as long as the mass market defines the baseline. Maybe we shouldn’t try to do so if doing so undermines our efforts to engage average people with our farms.

We can wait for baseline prices to come up, I guess. In the meantime a variety of strategies can patch things together.

[Rick Alger]

Good point, and if we ever do get to a truly local food economy it will be the local average folks that determine the marketplace baselines.

[Carl Russell]

As we get closer to a local food economy, it will become more and more cost effective to grow your own food, and the food producer will still be in the same quandary of how to price food based on its real cost, because consumers will only pay what they can afford to pay, and that will never be as much as it really costs.

It is one of the biggest questions for me, as far as developing sustainable land-use systems. Basing profitability on the abundance of the farmland, and the skill, or generosity of the farmer, rather than on cost-reflective revenue, creates pressure against the land. Developing food production systems that are the primary source of income also places significant emphasis on the productivity of the land, and the farming system. Combine these factors, and it can be a recipe for mining productivity out of the land, whether you use horse, hand, or tractor.

A land-base used to produce food, or fiber, for a family, clan, or client-base, or community, who contribute fully to the costs of production, can be invested with the accumulation of biomass, nutrients, and energy that it needs to produce sustainably.

Carl

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