Wait…It Costs HOW MUCH?
“It makes me feel good to support your family,” said my friend Cheri. “You support us by raising meat I feel good about putting on my table; we support you by buying your chicken!”
First of all, I just gotta say it: You guys are wonderful. I really haven’t heard the words “Wait…it costs HOW MUCH?” often at all. Maybe twice?
But I must admit: I’ve said them. I’ve talked before about how I run a pretty frugal kitchen, and that obviously plays a role as I seek out my food! Over the years, though, I have come to appreciate the Butchers, the Bakers, and the Candlestick Makers who are wise enough to figure out what it takes to stay in business. After all, “the labourer is worthy of his hire,” Luke 10:7, KJV.
My beautiful butter bowl, hand-crafted to my custom specs by a local craftsman. I think of the craftsman often as I make my butter. You can’t buy personal connection like that at Walmart.
Look, Folks, I’m really fond of my feed guy, my grain guy, my milk lady. (I’ve never yet met a Candlestick Maker, but I DID hire a local man to custom craft that gorgeous wooden butter bowl! Does that count?) I’d like them to live comfortably, and I’d REALLY like them to be here for me in 5 years…which they can NOT do if they don’t charge enough to make a living. Keep your eye on the people who sell stuff the cheapest: likely they won’t BE here in 5 years. It’s called “The Race to the Bottom.” Or, if they are here in 5 years, they’re cutting corners OR subsidizing their work with off-farm income. And that’s sad. I can think of a lot of things MORE fun to do than working my tail off for a pittance, especially as I just passed The Big 5-0.😂 You?
Yet there is often an underlying sense that if we get it locally, it ought to be LESS expensive.
And sometimes that’s true! Right time, right place, and your local farmer may be thrilled to sell you his “seconds,” what he can’t sell at market, for a bargain instead of throwing them away: something for you, something for him. I love that!
Another cost savings you enjoy when you “Buy Local” is that we aren’t shipping back and forth across the country. Sure, I pay to have the chicks shipped to me…but even that is just from the other side of Michigan. I don’t maintain a storefront. We don’t ship to retail stores. All of this saves money, and we all share in that benefit.
And yet, the fact remains that when you “Buy Local,” you generally pay more than if you bought a “similar” product at Walmart or on Amazon. And that typically comes down to FOUR things:
1) Economy of Scale - or the lack thereof
2) Subsidies - or, again, the lack thereof
3) The Personal Touch
4) True Value
Let’s take ‘em one at a time shall we?
Economy of Scale
This just isn’t possible in a small business or on a small farm. At least, not where it’s going to really “move the needle,” as they say. Oh, sure. There’s a little scale possible. For instance, it costs me the same amount of time each day to move 50 chickens in a broiler shelter as it does 75, so of course the closer I can move to 75 instead of 50, the better my price can be.
I buy our feed from a local organic grower. He provides a HUGE piece of my farming! So many of you are with me for health reasons, and if I go switching to “cheap feed” from a big box store to save money, my chicken may no longer be able to play the role it does now in your healing journey. It’ll become just one more thing your body has to fight through, instead of being the nourishing, healing food that you tell me it is. Oh, sure, my feed guy offers a discount for feed in bulk, but it works out to 2 cents savings per pound, which at my level, again, isn’t going to move the needle.
The general principle is this: Widget-Maker Sally, selling 400 widgets per year, must charge much more per widget than Widget-Maker Bob, selling 850,000! So since Sally can’t compete against Bob in price without losing her shirt, she’s got to compete in other ways. Things like…better quality materials, attention to detail, custom design, personal relationship. Make sense?
Subsidies
Here, again, is something that just doesn't apply on a small level. That price you see at the grocery store, the $3.79 for a dozen "organic, cage-free eggs" just ain't so. It isn't real. Oh, yes, it is true that you are swiping $3.79 on your debit card. That part is certainly true. What is NOT true is that $3.79 pays the farmer a living wage. No way. In fact, that farmer only gets about 11 cents on the dollar of what you pay at the store.
Let that sink in a minute.
Eleven. Cents. On. The. Dollar.
So how do those farmers make a living?
The bigger operations receive government subsidies (paid for via your tax dollars) to keep prices low, lulling the American people into the absurd notion that meat and eggs can be had for the price of a loaf of bread. 🙄
So when you pay your local farmer $6.50 or $9 or even more for a dozen eggs, the price you’re paying is REAL.
That $6.50 - or $9 - or $14- for a dozen eggs to your local farmer actually pays for the whole shebang.
In this way, while you may choose not to raise your own food, you are still participating in your food by paying for the chickens, the feed, the shelter, and the time the farmer spends managing her flocks and herds: for your farmer’s incomparable local service and expertise. That sounds like a fair deal to me.
The Personal Touch
This one is for those of you who appreciate KNOWING your farmer. Who HATE thought of how chickens are raised in the CAFO's. Who feel sad and sick when they discover that if a few chickens in confinement operations get Avian Flu - or if there aren’t enough workers in the factories to process them - the whole house of thousands will simply be smothered by foam or by shutting off the ventilation to kill them "efficiently." What happened to mercy?
When you pay whatever it takes to keep your small farmer in business, you’re paying for the personal touch.
You know me, you have my phone number, for crying out loud, and you know the love and compassion I have for our birds.
You know I’m out there at 3 a.m. in my pajamas during a thunderstorm shoving straw under the highly annoyed chickens 😊 to keep them out of the water running over the ground.
You know if a chicken HAS to be killed, it is done personally, quickly, and as mercifully as possible, with consideration for the chicken instead of our own weepy emotions about “killing animals.”
You know our chickens aren’t soaked in chlorinated water, because you’re welcome to WATCH our processing.
YOU are important, because YOU are the future of our business! I’m not saying it’s easy for them, but if a big company like Tyson or a conglomerate like Nestle has a recall or angers its customers, they have insurances and subsidies and hefty profit margins to help them over the hurdles until the public forgets. If WE mess up your chicken or prove unfaithful, well, Facebook and social media are a click away, and we’re done. Many of you are here via word of mouth, and the word of mouth that built our business over years can tear it down in days.
Because when you’re local, you can’t hide. It’s personal.
True Value
And, finally, True Value. Next time you're walking through the farmer's market and you think, "Wait! It costs HOW MUCH?" I want you to realize what you're getting.
It’s the difference between grabbing a box of Chips Ahoy off the grocery store shelf and paying your neighbor for her warm, gooey, fresh-out-of-the-oven Chocolate Chip Cookies: Grandma Mary’s recipe handed down.
Crispy, chewy, shaped by hand, and perfectly imperfect.
You can’t get that out of a box.
No preservatives, no additives, no vegetable oil, and they sure won’t last 3 months on your shelf. AND if you ask your neighbor to bake you a couple dozen for a party you’re having next week, you’d certainly hope for her sake she’d charge more than the Kroger $6.49 special!
Finally, ask yourself what you spend money on that DOESN’T matter. The $7 coffee at Starbucks, the $50 for the movie tickets and popcorn, the $80 you paid for the mediocre meal that left you sitting on the toilet for 4 hours, and the $200 you dropped at the hockey game. We all decide where to put our money.
It’s called “Voting with our dollars.”
“Show me where a man spends his money, and I’ll show you what he is.” (Martin Luther)
What is health worth? What is your local community worth? What is it worth to know your farmer? And do YOU think your Butcher, your Baker, and your Candlestick Maker deserve to be paid for their time, their efforts, and their knowledge? I certainly do…and I hope you do, too.