We often question why is freshly picked, local produce sometimes more expensive than what you can buy in the supermarkets. Here's why.
Have you ever been to the farmers market and overheard a conversation between a farmer and a customer where the customer tells the farmer their produce is expensive and they can get it for a better price at the supermarket?
The ensuing look on the farmer’s face is usually one of sheer annoyance and maybe even slight contempt with a peppering of exhaustion.
Small farmers cannot compete with supermarkets. Why?
Farming does not pay monetarily. How many people do you know or see getting into farming as a career to buy that dream Range Rover or Porsche?
It either takes a lot of money upfront and a continuous injection of funds or inheriting a farm or land. Add the overhead of mechanical and equipment costs, fuel costs, insurances, utilities and the costs of maintaining a family and perhaps you too might understand that ‘look’.
Farming is hard work. It is a lot of trying to understand the soil and weather but at the same time understanding that Mother Nature will do her thing and all you can do is try to be prepared. It is the constant frustrations of dealing with a different pest on a different product each year, or watching a crop produce a low yield and not knowing why.
Organic farmers not only have to put up with ridiculous stipulations, fees and constant assessments from government officials to make sure they are ‘growing organic’, but they also have to deal with large corporations with massive financial backing who decide that if your farm became contaminated with their patented seeds, then the small farmer has to pay them, through no fault other than the wind. Your small farmer needs petrol for a refrigerated truck and sometimes accommodation, and therefore meals, to travel to and fro some Farmer’s Markets, especially in the cities.
US farmers are in debt. A great deal of debt. The farming community’s suicide rate is higher than that of the military and it is steadily increasing.
There are mounting bills, poorer soil conditions, longer drought conditions, lower yields yet more food waste piled onto the regular daily worries of sending their children to school clothed and fed.
Yet the main reason for farming remains strong in their hearts. The joys of new life and the emotions of death. The connection to nature and sustaining life off the land. Enjoying the close knit farming community and quality of life. Some people cannot and will not set that aside for anything in the world.
So, next time you are at the farmers market, looking at semi-perfect vegetables or slightly bruised, freshly picked, in-season fruit, know that the person in front of you has life hard enough already. They are just trying to make it back home with some cash to help justify their toil.
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