MooreHavenGardens’s Recent Comments

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  Your nails......my hammer....

    Interesting how the same themes seem to be repeated over and over here. I especially like the comment by kmp on how lucky I am to have such "educated" customers. Hahahaha !! They weren't always so educated. I've had to slowly educate them and prove my worth to them.(see earlier contribution)
     Here's my take on this thread - you all want organic, you want local fresh, you don't want to shop at Wal-Mart, you like the idea of buying from your local co-op, but can't always find the disposable cash to pay the higher prices....oh, and you think the general population is ignorant of the issues.....
    Let's take the last one first - Wrong!!! The general public would have to have been kept in solitary confinement for all of their adult life not to have some basic knowledge on the subject of organics and health. That debate is over, it's topic has saturated every media outlet for a few years now. That line of thinking tends to lend itself more to the "educated elites" who think the rest of us are just a little bit too country to know what's best for us.
     You want your food to be organic. Cool, I'm all for it. Me too. But you gotta eat, so if you can't get organic, you'll have to make do with what you have access to. But if you hope to save the world from itself, organics by itself ain't gonna do it, it's too small a cog in a much bigger equation. Add all the other cogs to it, and you might make an impact.
     You want local fresh. Duh!!! But fresh is a relative term. Fresh has more to do with getting the value for your food dollar than anything else. If it isn't as fresh as can be had in YOUR area, then you've been cheated. And you did it to yourself.
     Wal-Mart. Get over it....they are here, and they are gonna stay. All because the buying public wants them to. Wal-Marts to some are like Vegas is to others; bright and shiny, Disneyland under one roof. Since my business is dealing with produce managers and store owners, here's a little in-site they are finding out: unless Wal-Mart is the only game in town, only a very small portion of the local buying population is buying "fresh produce" there. Statisticly in my area (Iowa) they tend to be the "flyer shoppers", those that will spend a dollar to save a dime, whether they need the "sale item" or not. The same is not true however for dry goods, there it's a pure marketing and pricing war. But I grow veggies, so where you buy your toilet paper is your business.
     Co-ops. Let's throw in farmer's markets in here too. I'm all for supporting the local economic structure. But here's a little secret too: organics tend to be overpriced. Much of the "hype" about organics has been promoted to drive the prices up, mainly for corperate farming. That's gonna generate some hate mail-hahaha!!! And the reason they tend to be overpriced is because the guy gowing them wants what his 9 to 5, factory-working cousin has; the nice toys, the upwardly mobil lifestyle, a paid vacation, the "better" things in life. I live in the heart of the country where the death of the family farm is an in-your-face reality. You can put all the bankers and economists you want on the jury, but it still comes down to "trying to keep up with the Jones'". Only city folks and the educated elite ask me how much I make an hour growing fresh produce. There is no hourly wage, only what you get at the end of the day when you've sold a load of produce. It's farming, and the heart of farming isn't about how much money you've stashed in the bank, it's about a way of life and the enjoyment you derive from it. And if that statement bothers you, sell your dirt and tractor and go get a factory job, you'll be happier in the long run. And when you leave your little acrage, that you kept after the farm sale just so you can say you live in the country, on your way to your job in town, I'm gonna enjoy the sunrise with my cup of coffee, maybe catch a glimpse of the neighborhood fox chasing mice in the pasture, or the call of a quail to his girlfriends. The point is, organics don't have to cost more, they cost more because the consumer is willing to let them cost more.
    Okay, you're wondering who the hell I think I am to make such bold statements like these. I'm the guy who doesn't bother with co-ops, farmer's markets, or direct selling of my produce. I make a living off 5 acres ( 4.999999 actually ) selling to common, every-towns-got-one grocery stores. I don't "sell" organic, but the relationships I have with my produce managers is that they trust me to provide them with a quality product that their customers can readily identify as a superior product compared to what they can offer in my off-season. Produce managers don't really care if it's organic or not, they care about shelf-life. Shelf-life means money to them. They will sell whatever the public wants to buy, and if and when they can, the public wants organic, for whatever their personal reasons. In my area, produce managers at the store levels would rather not carry "corperate" organics. The fact is that they have an even shorter shelf-life than conventionally grown, thus more is thrown away at the store level, thus helping to drive up the cost to the end consumer. And that right there is why I make a living doing something I like doing. Local fresh is what I sell. Vine-to-plate time. True value for the money spent. To get into a store, first I build a relationship with the produce department, I note the items it sells that I do or can grow, and I prove the quality of the product I present. I ask what I can grow for them that their customers are asking for. Spend a day in a produce department, watch how much is thrown away as soon as it comes off the warehouse truck, and you'll understand why produce departments are crying for local growers to approach them about doing business. Ask your store's produce manager how much he buys locally, and the most common answer is that they don't know who's growing locally. They can't go out and find the growers, the growers have to go to them. And growers have to understand that you can't have a substainable business if you can't accept that you aren't going to get paid co-op or farmer's market or direct sales prices, but that you also didn't spend nearly as much time marketing your produce to a grocery store - drop off your delivery, pick up your cash, and down the road you go, back to what a "farmer" really wants to be doing; growing stuff that somebody wants to pay for. Unless you really like gabbing half the day away with people who mostly complain about your pricing, under-pricing to out-sell your neighbor, and complaining how life's not fair. Stop and think about the consumer traffic thru a conventional grocery compared to a farmers market or a co-op, both who tend to cater to a very, very small portion of the food buying dollars in this country. If you went to collage to get a degree in agriculture, and I didn't, and you took a course in marketing your finished goods, you'll remember the teacher telling you that without a customer base, there was no point to your endevores. My customer base, the poor, uneducated consumer that you all think doesn't know the smell and slime of rotten produce when they walk by it, has always been there.
     Hmmmm..sun's coming up, think I'll grab a cup of coffee.....can't wait to see what this stirs to the top of the kettle....
    On Big buyers make organic farmers feel smaller than ever posted 3 years, 3 months ago 25 Responses

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  Time to Rethink.....

  My customers, mainly produce managers,started sweating when Wal-Mart anounced their "organic" push. As a grower, with 4 Wal-Marts within a 60 mile radius, one a block away from one of my best customers,I'm glad for Wal-Mart making a big deal about their organics. I'm one of the "little guys" just scraping by, growing organic,not for the higher revenue, but because it's a belief that the purety of the food we eat is as important as the purity of the water we drink and the air we breath. It's about quality of the product I provide for the end user. It's more of a moral and ethical issue for me. I don't "sell" organic. I sell "FRESH". And that's how I've calmed my customer's fears of the "big box" competition. As long as they(my customers) were selling a fresh product, Wal-Mart will never be able to compete with them. Fresh produce, organic or not, will always trump shipped, trucked, warehoused, imported, half-past-it's-shelf-life organic produce. The second best thing to happen to the organic industy is the big boys jumping on the organic hooppla band wagon just to cash in on the payola, because the only way for them to make the profits that coorporate farming needs to survive is to cut the corners and bend or rewrite the rules dictating it, thus, eventually destroying the credibility of the "organic mantra" that they tout so loudly, thus giving the little local guy like me the edge we need to market what has the "real" value when you talk about veggies, and that's how fresh is it.It's a new day in our work of choice, and the customer is getting better educated. Half rotten organics have no value in the end and if all you have to offer is "organic" as your sales pitch, then you're selling the wrong thing.
  My condolences to those that I've just pissed-off, I may have been out in the sun pulling weeds too long today.On Big buyers make organic farmers feel smaller than ever posted 3 years, 3 months ago 25 Responses