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  • From: "Hook Family" <ghf AT townisp.com>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Cheap food
  • Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 12:05:23 -0400

Amen! I sell a few free range eggs for my CSA members and friends I am staying at $3 dzn new folks $3.50 and I make no apologies. They are expensive to produce factoring housing and feed. According to an article from a recent Mother Earth News pastured eggs have way more nutrients (some of which are way way more) than store eggs. In a way its sort of like this: Grocery eggs $1.50 dzn plus $8 bottle of vitamins or $3.50 free range eggs :). You can read the article online at their web page.

I get annoyed (dh as well) when we think of what people pay for "not" food, jeans as mentioned, movies, way more car than necessary, fancy booze, even cigarettes virtually without complaint but food of which one can not live without oh that has to be cheap. It maybe trite to say "you get what you pay for". There are articles floating around (I think it was in consumer reports) of various grocery store veggies decreasing in nutrients over the years.
Beth

But the supermarket stuff is, in many ways, artificially cheap. Much of
it is grown with artificially cheap irrigation water in places with
long seasons but little natural moisture, and/or in places with wages
far less than the minimums where most of us are living. Almost all of
it is grown with varieties and techniques selected to produce the
highest yield and best shipping ability, not those chosen to produce
the best flavor or highest nutrition.

And people pay extra for what they perceive as quality, all the time.
There is a huge range of prices charged for, to take one example of
very many, a pair of blue jeans.
snip

And, "when the crunch comes": are you sure we'll continue to be able to
get cheap food shipped in from all over the world? or that it will stay
cheap, if the food supply becomes controlled by only a few companies?
Maybe we'd better have some local farmers still in business.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale



  • [Market-farming] Cheap food, Hook Family, 05/18/2007

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