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  • From: SaladG AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Market Prices
  • Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:43:58 EDT

WE have  a vendor that has a couple of large booth's in our market and they are so cheap that they don't even to try to compete in our market, they just give it away because their comment is we have to sell all of it, and it is a lot.  Truth is they just plain and simple overwhelm our market with so much product, no one else can even get close to grocery store price.  I counted 126 cases of lettuce, 25 cases of greens, lettuce 3/1.00 greens .50 a bunch.  If our market was as big as it used to be maybe the other vendors would have a chance, but now the parking is a mess in the old market area with so much going on every weekend and our regular customers are using other markets in town on Saturday, they have no less than 5 other markets in town on Saturday Mornings and three on Sunday.  What a thrill, College World Series starts this Saturday, I love the games, but sales really suck because this series puts 3 Million people in town for 10 days and if you need to go downtown Omaha for the next week, forget it unless you take a bus or have a personal paid for parking spot.
 
People that go to these events are not going to buy vegetables, they are looking for fun, not food.  This market is a ton of fun to attend, but when some vendors are not even using common sense in sales it hurts the whole market, and they expect everyone to be as cheap as the other vendors in the market.  Laura Hodges touched on this a while back, some vendors need to spend a little more time figuring there actual cost of production of each product they are growing.  We do around 400 bunches of green each week mostly wholesale because of pricing in markets, 1.42 last week to 1.75 a bunch to our wholesale outlets and they stop at the farm and pick up.  We get 2.00 at the markets and sell ok so why in the world would anyone sell for .50 a bunch.  Figure the time, pick, wash, bundle,and cool, and sell for .50.  I figured our cost at .72 a bundle, with no labor bill. 
 
I think some of these conferences in the winter need to do a little more on marketing of vegetable products and show how you actually do make a good living in this business,  volume is good but selling below cost is just plain stupid, and it actually hurts your whole market when selling below cost of production.
 
Phil from Iowa
 



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