Jules asked here: The price of all foods is on the increase here in the UK (and globally from what I've read). Have you noticed this in Canada and, if so, are you adjusting your market prices accordingly? What about the CSA prices? I guess the 'share price' is fixed in advance, so how can you compensate for rising costs and prices as they occur during your harvesting period? Would you simply supply less for the same money? Maybe rhetorical questions today, but are they issues you've thought about for the future?
Yes, I'm not in the supermarkets much, so I was pretty shocked at the increases for fresh produce I noticed over the last few months. Cheap food isn't so cheap anymore! Almost everything was around the same price I'm selling for at the market, which wasn't the case a year ago when I was a bit more expensive (my prices haven't changed).
I've had limited experience as far as different sales situations, just my local, small farmers' market and the CSA, and my pricing approach is not very sophisticated, but I still have a strong opinion: sell direct, no middlemen—get 100% of the consumer dollar—and price as high as the market will bear!
If that last part sounds kinda aggressive and mercenary, it's not at all, and I can't think of another way of putting it. I believe it's established that fresh food in many parts of the first world is unnaturally cheap. Mass-produced produce is sold as a supermarket loss leader, leading in to processed food sales (I recently read that a $4 box of corn flakes contains around 5 cents worth of corn, that's less than 2% of the retail price…!). With this as the pricing backdrop in the public mind, your hope of getting a realistic price based on the cost of growing on a small, local farm are kinda dismal.
You can always aim for high-end markets, like, specializing in heirloom tomatoes at exorbitant prices at a gourmet farmers' market in a big city! Seek the affluent!
If you want to sell local to…everyone, you're going to at first be limited by people's expectations based on prevailing prices. Building a clientele who value your veggies, while continually improving your overall operation (better selection, more efficient production, etc, from one season to the next), and charging as top dollar as you can makes sense to me. You'll gradually filter to the people who are willing to pay fair prices (the idea being, you don't get something for nothing, better food is worth more—and as supermarket cheap food starts to be not so cheap, that should become more obvious). But that's not gonna be everyone's approach.
Of course, having a good (written) handle on all of your expenses is critical. Record-keeping! And keep an eye on the inevitable "free" labor that you provide for yourself! Bottom line: as long as you really know how much it costs you to farm per season, you can always use arithmetic to find your breakeven and mark up from there.
As for taking into account fluctuations over the season, well, in my case, I already have pricing flexibility. My prices at the farmers' market vary a bit from week to week, based on crop and supply. And the CSA share is determined on a weekly basis.
Basically, though, I'm trying to stay local to keep things as stable as possible. I plan with an ideal 25-mile radius of the farm in mind. At 25 miles, I don't have far to go, people don't have far to come. IOW, who you sell to, including where they're located, makes a big difference in the cost and pricing equation. We stopped delivering CSA to the Big City (Toronto), 75 miles away, two years ago, after the second year, because I found it was rapidly becoming as much a distribution business as farming. We could probably have 100-150 members, more even, by now, with much higher revenue, but it, uh, didn't feel right. Not stable. So two years ago, I apologized to the Toronto members and went totally local. Transportation costs are probably the biggest factor in food prices. By keeping them a relatively minor consideration here, I don't really have to worry about my own costs rising dramatically during the season.
Hope there's something useful in there!
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