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market-farming - Selling for other growers (was Re: [Market-farming] Holes in Beans)

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: "cheselka AT theriver.com" <cheselka AT theriver.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Selling for other growers (was Re: [Market-farming] Holes in Beans)
  • Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 20:15:50 -0400


Willie, points well taken.

Here's an actual situation I'm in right now. A lady and her husband bought
a pear and apple orchard from Farmer Brown (yep, his last name was actually
Brown) in 1998. To make ends meet, the husband has on off-farm job (VERY
off farm in that he's only home on the weekends). His wife is left to
attend to the orchard, which is a u-pick operation. She needs to therefore
be there all the time waiting for customers who come fairly frequently.
Despite the u-pick being pretty successful, they still have gobs of pears
and apples either sitting in the cooler or rotting on the trees. She's
asked me (Grower A) to bring her (Grower B) excess, or at least some of it,
to the market. Depending on how you look at this, it *could* be called
reselling, but I'm not seeing it that way. The way I see it, she's selling
her stuff through me for X dollars, and I'm getting a percentage of the
sale as the middleman. The only difference is that I won't be taking a 90%
cut on the sale, but something more like 50%.

Another thing we thought of doing was making it such that The Market sold
items that couldn't be directly sold by the growers. So in essense The
Market would be the "reseller", or the middleman, or whatever you want to
call it. The Market would pocket the profits.

The fact is that she's in a situation where she *can't* go to the market(s)
and sell her stuff. I'd rather see locally and organically grown pears and
apples sold at the market than have them rotting on the trees. This also
gets stuff on the market tables where they'd otherwise be empty. We'll be
a small market for a while, so any extras are appreciated by everyone!

In the long term, it *would* be best to encourage her and others like her
to come sell this stuff herself. But in the short term, it seems like a
reasonable solution, as long as everyone wins. Perhaps something can be
put into the market rules to ensure that this doesn't become a big,
long-term problem.

Thanks for getting me thinking, Willie!! ;)

Matt Cheselka
Cosmic Lettuce

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