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market-farming - Re: new farmer

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: "Bill Shoemaker" <wshoemak AT inil.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: new farmer
  • Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 09:14:36 -0600


>What evidence do you have that the people engaged in direct marketing
>of truck crops are actually "earning a living"? My experience is that
>truck farmers need outside income to support their habit.

I don't have economic data but I do have common sense. Almost all of
them around me (~100 farm families) have been doing it for years. Many of
them were doing it before I got started 20 years ago. They are still doing
it. While many of the wholesale fruit and veggie farms have gone out of
business, the direct-marketers continue. They are buying new tractors. They
are expanding their greenhouse ranges and setting up additional markets.
They keep the same employees for years. They don't have second jobs because
if your first job takes 14 hours a day or more seven days a week, you don't
have time for a second job. In the off-season you rest. They live in nice,
well-kept homes.

Now, I will say I work on the edge of the Chicago metropolitan area.
Many of these growers have the opportunity to market in densely populated
areas and to populations with generous incomes. They market at or above
grocery store prices because their product is better than the product in the
grocery stores and their customers recognize that. Many are farming in the
third, fourth or fifth generation so have the discipline, skills and culture
of market farming bred into them. But not all of them. One of the best
growers I work with started from scratch. But he was intelligent and was the
recipient of a lot of support from the rest of the industry.

I don't mean to imply that it's easy or that you can't fail. I just want
to make sure that people realize that direct-marketing is a sound, viable
economic opportunity for those who embrace it, work hard and work
intelligently.

Bill Shoemaker
Sr Research Specialist, Food Crops
Univ of Illinois - St Charles Hort Research Center





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