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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Pricing produce

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: Matt Cheselka <cheselka AT freestateproject.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Pricing produce
  • Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 18:25:11 -0600 (CST)

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004, Liz Pike wrote:

> Ok, should I be the pit bull I want to be and continue this debate or let it
> die a natural death?? I'll do the right thing <I hear a collective sigh from
> the list ; )) >

I apologize to the list and especially to Liz. It wasn't my intention to
cause any kind of trouble. Yes, let's let this one die a natural death.

> Matt, go back and read my posts. For the life of me I don't see shocking in
> any of them. I read nothing but support for your ventures. Please point
> out my misunderstanding in a private email if you so care.

I have read and re-read your posts, Liz. I'll send you a list of things
privately.

> Farming has this annoying tendency to appear wrapped in
> romance but when uncovered hides a harsh reality.

I know very well that there's a "practical" side to market
gardening/farming. That is, the uncontrollable urge to help veggies grow
combined with the need to keep the bills paid. One can romanticize until
the end of time but if you don't have a roof over your head you've got a
lot of trouble and it's hard to be romantic when you're wet, cold, and
hungry (ask the 4/5ths of the worlds population about that!).

So if at all possible I'd like to re-open this discussion (esp since I was
the one who got it off-track!) to the topic stated in the Subject Line:
"Pricing produce". Now, IF you decide (and that's a big if, see below)
that you're going to use market gardening as a way to make money and pay
all your bills, then you need to take into consideration certain things:

1. How many dollars you need in order to keep the
bills paid
2. How many dollars is costs you to keep the veggies
growing
3. How many dollars potential customers are willing to
pay for the veggies you help grow

There may be other considerations but I can't think of them.

Trying to think out loud in generalized terms, let's say that you need
$25,000 per year to pay all the basic bills. Let's also say it costs you
$10,000 per year to grow your veggies. So in order to just make ends
meet, somehow you need to make $35,000 per year. If you decide to use
market gardening/farming to do this, then you gotta think about selling
your stuff and exchanging it for money. Say overall you charge your
customers an average of $4 per pound for the veggies you sell them (some
veggies will be more, some will be less). This means that you need to
produce *and sell* 8,750 pounds of veggies. If you have an acre of land,
you'd need to make sure you could produce and sell about 1/5th of a pound
per square foot per year. To me, not only is that possible, but I'd bet
that 1/5th of a pound is very poor annual production for a square foot of
good dirt. Anything above and beyond that would be "profit". Those of us
who have less dirt to deal with, like me with about 6000 sq ft, need to
get a whopping 1.4 pounds per sq ft per year in order to make ends meet.
This also doesn't sound too outrageously out of the ballpark.

Production is the "easy" part, though. Plants want to grow and they will
whether you want them to or not. Besides helping happy plants grow, the
main task is to sell the stuff to people who want them. My argument, and
I could be totally wrong, is that veggies will sell themselves as long as
they're decent (or better!) both in quality and in price. My queries to
wholesalers in my area is they're *desperate* for local stuff as long as
it's good quality -- they'll take pretty much anything I grow at what I'd
consider a pretty reasonable price. At the farmers markets where I sold
my lettuce and other stuff, there were 3 or 4 other veggie sellers also
with lettuce (and lots of other stuff, too). It didn't matter: my stuff
sold out just like theirs did, even though I was just a 4x4 ft card table
with a terribly pathetic hand-made sign and only a little veggie display.

If I'm being idealistic or stupid or just plain wrong about these figures,
I'd like to know where I'm going wrong. I'm not basing anything I say
above on guesses or theory -- they're all my actual, but somewhat limited,
experience.

I'd also like to discuss if you're NOT going to use market gardening as a
way to make some money, but rather you're going to do whatever is
necessary to make money in order to market garden -- with the ultimate
goal of market gardening in order create conditions that allow you to
market garden. Do you follow that?? That is, completely sustainable
agriculture. But this email has gone on too long already.

Again, my sincerest apologies for causing trouble.

Matt Cheselka
Cosmic Lettuce





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