I just wanted to flag something at this point in Milkwood Farm’s development, regarding food. You know, those beautiful shots we share of honeycomb on sourdough scones, home-cured bacon and fresh rainbow radishes. They look nice, don’t they? and they are. They really are.
Feeding crew and students amazing food, grown and cooked with love, is a huge priority for us here – for reasons of ethics, health and because we want to walk the walk on clean food, not just talk about it. But there is a flipside, as we’re discovering…
Hoping that I don’t lose half our readership here, I’ll just come out and say it: producing clean food at Milkwood is darn expensive. And I don’t think it’s just us, either. Producing clean food is expensive full stop. At least compared to the prices we all see in the supermarket.
Knowing that our tomatoes are nutrient dense, fresh, super local and grown in a way that didn’t rely on fossil fuels or chemicals to progress them from seed to many kilos of fruit is wonderful. I am proud and thankful of everyone who labored to bring them to the table, and to our emerging farm/education system that makes the market garden enterprise (and hence the en-masse tomatoes) possible.
If we track back through the ‘true cost’ of the tomato dish before us however, in terms of hours spent on labor, organic inputs and direct funds for wages & price-per kilo loading, these are probably the most expensive tomatoes we will ever eat.
That is, compared to saying ‘oh bugger it’ and trotting off to the supermarket or the farmer’s market to get a couple of boxes of the conventionally (or even organically) grown stuff.
Is it worth it? Hell yeah. Producing these tomatoes organically on-farm is part of our general up-skilling charter, provides experiential learning for interns, wwoofers and students, provides Michael with a right livelihood and increases our farm community’s overall food security.
Producing annual veggies on-farm at a community scale also locks us all into a relationship with the seasons that we wouldn’t otherwise have – it’s pea-shelling season this week, and everyone’s involved in that seasonal task. We’re also shucking the final flush of broadbeans.
And then there’s the health benefits. We all eat very well here, with fresh food from our veggie garden every single day – no matter if there’s 10 of us for lunch, or 35, or 70. Each day, everyone at Milkwood Farm eats nutrient-dense, organically grown veggies from our garden, with all the assets that fresh organic food brings.
When I spell it out that like that, the cost price of the tomatoes seems quite reasonable, and worth it.
The thing that I’m concerned with however is this: any way you look at it, a single farm producing a diverse range of clean food on a community scale is darn expensive compared to supermarket prices. What does this mean for us effectively plugging into our local food supply?
To be blunt, if we went to the Mudgee farmer’s markets this weekend, we’d need to charge about $4 per kilo for our remaining nicola potatoes, because that’s a representational cost of producing them in a sustainable, low-energy system.
$4 a kilo for fantastic, nutrient dense, chemical free potatoes might be great and reasonable from a ‘true cost’ (and lack of footprint + negative environmental impact) perspective, but in Australia, at this point in time, that price makes them rich people’s potatoes.
It’s not our potatoes fault. Nor ours. It’s got a lot to do with scales of production, mechanized and industrial processes, and of course fossil fuels which make ordinary potatoes ‘cheap’. Cheap for the end user’s wallet, but not cheap for the soil, the end-user’s health, nor the planet.
Yes I know you know all this. I know it all too. Industrialized food is cheap at the checkout and expensive in every other way imaginable, we all know that.
But we still use that supermarket price point as a hallmark for what constitutes things like value & affordability when it comes to food.
And because we all inherently use the supermarket checkout price point, it’s highly likely that until there is a big shift in what constitutes value when it comes to food (local, low-footprint, grown with human and compost power rather than industrial-scale fossil fuel-driven machines + inputs), that our potatoes will remain in the ‘nice but too expensive’ part of most people’s brains, and they just won’t buy them.
Interesting, isn’t it. We want to interact with our local food system and offer our amazing produce to locals, but because of the industrialized food system and the systemic assumptions that brings with it about what’s a reasonable price, we can’t effectively participate.
Not unless we either cut our prices to compete (which means our system won’t be sustainable) or risk a whole lot of leftover food at the end of the market if our prices are perceived as too high and therefore the veggies don’t sell (also not sustainable). There is the ‘gourmet product’ angle that we could possibly investigate, but that negates the opportunity to feed regular people in our local community clean food.
Within the system at Milkwood, we can support the cost of producing this food with the fact that we feel it’s important to be producing as much of our on-farm catering needs as we possibly can, so essentially we buy it ourselves. We deal with absorbing that cost however we can, because we see that as the true cost of producing clean food, which is our responsibility to bear.
As I said, we wouldn’t have it any other way – this ongoing journey of food production has been a massive learning curve for everyone involved and has heightened our appreciation for clean food and what constitutes value within our food system – yet at the same time we can’t expect everyone who is not deeply connected with the process from seed to fruit to understand what this community-scale food growing thing takes.
I do know that as a result of this learning curve that we value the food we produce incredibly highly – there’s no such thing as ‘just a radish’ on our farm. It’s all intrinsic, it’s all valuable, it’s all a gift.
Which is why it’s such a joy to share the results with you, and to hold up the beauty of the radish, of the leafy greens, and of the honeycomb and sourdough scones – all these things drip with implication and impact for us now, beyond the fact that they taste great and allow us to keep going.
In future years, we hope to be part of a co-op of local growers, which may go a long way to alleviating our current situation – if 5 locals grew 5 crops each (selected according to each individual farmer’s resources, soils etc) we might collectively stand a chance to create the genesis an affordable local organic food system that is also sustainable for the small farmer.
For now, we rejoice in the amazing food coming off our farm. But we dream of a future where this gift of clean food can include our wider community, while allowing us to live to grow another day. I’m sure we’ll get there, but it sure is a helluva ride figuring all this out, while maintaining everything else that we’re doing.
Here’s to radishes, co-operation and participating in the great re-skilling, in order to be part of the solution.
>> More posts about growing clean food
I’d just like to add that the title of this post was inspired by seeing that phrase at some miscellaneous and un-remembered point. Having googled it, turns out it’s one of the many fabulous farmers that make up the greenhorns movement in the US: wwwthewisdomoftheradish.com
58 Comments
Well, I scrolled through the wisdomoftheradish website and am still crying tears of laughter after reading about the pig shootin’ mama! I can well relate to their dilemma as I too am fighting Mother Nature’s furry, feathered and crawling forms in a constant battle to grow our food in a clean natural way. Just when I think I’ve got them beaten they discover a flaw in my plans and destroy our crop again. I think I’m losing the battle and, in particular, the pesky rabbits can run up their victory flag. Like the gun totin’ pig farmer, I too have a gun. I just can’t hit what I aim at. I’m sure that a rabbit this morning actually waved hello when he saw me coming. I suppose it’s comforting to know that at least we wont starve if there’s a supermarket in the next town.
or you could eat the rabbits? (just a thought)
Bob Comis wrote a great essay at Grist a while back about these very issues:
http://grist.org/locavore/2011-03-29-access-farmers-market-pastured-pork/
And another, much more gung-ho about actually trying to scale up his process to hit those price points where broader class of people could have access to good meat:
http://grist.org/locavore/2011-03-18-forget-farmers-markets-i-want-to-see-my-meat-in-price-chopper/
I think the goal of trying to build a system where everyone has access to good food is not just audacious: it’s actually crazy. The odds are stacked way against us, and analysis of the root financials do not look good.
But in theory, at it’s heart, sustainable farming *has no inputs*. The theoretical minimum cost of sustainable food is $0. That is, if all our food grew near our homes and we had the culture and technology to nurture the soil and process our food as a part of our normal lives in an unobtrusive way, it would cost us nothing. And we’d get Vitamin D and exercise to boot.
So, I take some solace in that. We may be at $4 a kilo now, but in the distant future we’ll be at $0 and even if we can only get it down to $3.50 in our lifetime that doesn’t make this work any less important.
Sustainable agriculture is a classic “disruptive technology” (a la The Innovator’s Dillemma). It starts out with outlandish barriers to adoption and fundamental advantages. Over time, with diligence, the barriers slowly break down but the advantages remain. And then, one day, the math adds up and there is a sea change.
I remember those posts when they came out – thankyou!
And for those that didn’t see them when they came out – thank you for popping them back into circulation – they are so apt, and those in the regenerative farming movement will truly know we’ve succeeded when our produce does reach to those consumers at the supermarket – but at the same time ensuring a fair livelihood for the producer and a balanced ecological result – not something that the supermarkets are even hinting at supporting today.
‘morning Kirsten. One of your important and thoughtful blogs and as one who was so intimately involved in setting up the food production at Mikwood last year I resonate with your message.
Knowing the COST of everything and the VALUE of nothing is a modern curse I feel. So your pointing out the value of home grown food is timely. There is also the joy of it which cannot be costed. And the connection to land – something so many city-born do not experience. But everything you are doing at Milkwood is trying to reverse that and so much more. Hope you will continue for many years.
S x
It strikes me that costing in your labour will always push your costs way above those of a commercial farmer, especially those who rely heavily on machinery to do their work; the economy of scale also plays a big part. But then if you live in an industrialised world you have only two choices; take part and buy from the supermarket or go it alone and forget about cost. It’s a fine line and its easy to cross, so don’t try and be an accountant; there are too many already.
No we dont want to be accountants, but we do want to be able to pay everyone involved in this enterprise at the end of the week, so trying to find a balance
Great article and great debate, some very interesting points made. Good luck keeping the scales balanced.
Hi Kirsten,
Well put. Couldn’t agree more. Even growing your own on a small scale in a backyard is expensive if time involved is included and the cost of processing excess produce and buying in materials that aren’t easily collectable. Many people baulk at the cost of having me come and set up/maintain their veg garden, but those that do are now reaping the rewards of mighty fine food fresh at their backdoor. Even still, I don’t charge the true cost. I love what I do and what you guys do. It gives people joy, I love feeling connected and getting my hands grubby and I love eating the awesomeness produced – sourdough bread, fruit, veg, eggs, mushies, cheese, yoghurt etc.
Keep doing what you’re doing. A way will become clear and possible and maybe, just maybe, society will realise how important this really is.
Carly xx
will do x
Thanks Kirsten for this honest and important post.
I guess the central point is that you’re up against an industrialised, subsidised food production system. Subsidised by the taxes we pay into health care, road building and maintenance, erosion control, pollution mitigation. ‘Subsidised’ by the pesticides and other toxins in our environment and our bodies. ‘Subsidised’ by the bees which are disappearing worldwide. ‘Subsidised’ by our largest river system which has so much of its water extracted for irrigation that it barely flows into the ocean. ‘Subsidised’ by future generations who have a perfect shitstorm of climate change, population explosion, water scarcity and topsoil erosion coming their way.
You can’t compete with that perverse system on price and probably shouldn’t try. What you’re doing at the moment is turning food into knowledge and exporting that – infinitely more valuable.
Thanks Steve!
My 2 bobs worth. Look at your farm business marketing as wholisticaly as you are the nutrient cycles of the farm. Sell the spuds for what ever value they represent to the consumer at the time and dont be afraid to take a loss. after all 2 bucks a kg is still 2 bucks. allow the cost of this enterprise to be subsidised by another area of the business that has more value to offer the consumer but at a much higher profit level. Its how the supermarkets do it with their loss leaders. I think a system with old fashioned production with modern marketing can work. Julian , Fertile Farm.
Hi Kirsten.
Great post, and one that resonates with us. As micro / bespoke vegetable producers on the mid north coast, we too found high resistance from the local community to our organic, handmade vegetables as the consumers here are extremely price conscious. We battled away for 3 1/2 years trying to educate them – and they all know the values and benefits, but are unable (or unwilling) to justify the additional cost.
We now travel to Sydney to a weekly market – we are greeted with open arms (virtually swooned over), they is no problem about pricing, and we usually sell out. We understand the use of fossil fuel to transport our goods, and yes, they can be perceived as rich peoples food, but unfortunately when operating in a commercial environment, certain dictums still exact a toll.
sounds like efficient use of energy to me under the circumstances…
Milkwood meals may cost a lot in dollars but don’t cost the Earth.
In that regard, the energy balance sheet for this food does balance,
that is Solar energy wise, the ultimate source of all our energy
whereas factory farmed produce has massive hidden costs
as Steve W said re. subsidies.
But those so-called hidden costs/subsidies are actually
loans taken out against future generations of Earths inhabitants.
climate change/destablisation, environmental degradation in all forms
are the ‘calling in’ of the debt….’no such thing as a free lunch’
our children and their children will be paying back the debt
in some way or another.
Milkwood meals and the motivation behind them are an antidote to this pathogenic behaviour of modern society
and show an alternative example for those who ‘know’ something is wrong,
but may not know how to be part of the solution.
yeah. when are you coming to dinner?
I agree with all you have said and as a farmer, I also know it will not change as all of us need capital to survive. Even so, due to the shortsightedness of our politicians and the mass sale of our land to foreign countries and to developers, the time of food shortage in Australia will come. Then, your prises will be cheep. Even the developer will swop his Ferrari for a spud, because you can’t enjoy anything until your belly is ful of food. The big secret is to hold on to your land!!!
Kind regards
Paul
I hear you Kirsten and I think it’s important for us to remind all those around us that we never truly pay the ‘real’ price of food as it is heavily subsidised, produced on a large scale (large economies of scale) and generally poor (poor nutritional value, poor soils, poor fertilisers, poor breed, etc.).
The other day my husband gasped when he bought our raw Jersey milk from the local shop… We’ve been drinking that milk for some time now and we all love it. It is sustainably & ethically produced from pastured cows, it is organic and fair traded… it costs me over $7 a bottle (2l). Compared to the $4 or even $2 we pay for the ‘industrial’ milk from supermarkets.
It’s darn expensive but there’s no going back. The other supermarket milk options taste like water.
Once you know about real, good, tasty, safe, environmentally sound food… there’s indeed no going back.
There are ways at saving money to pay for ‘expensive’ organic food.
- One is to stop drinking coffee – $3.5 a cup a day that’s $1277.5 saved.
- Another is to never buy junk food.
- Nor dine outside regularly.
- Eat less.
- Grow some food.
You guys are phenomenal pioneers and inspiration for us all. Thanks.
I went to a farming forum in Mudgee last night where some farmers are creating a market based primarily on the nutrient density of their beef (as well as their regenerative practices) – the theory being that you just dont need to eat as much of it because of the nutrient and mineral density it delivers… which made me think of the difference between super quality milk and supermarket stuff x
It’s good to read someone say it. I read lots of blogs which claim if you want to save money, grow your own food. It’s not that simple if you haven’t been blessed with perferct soil and climate conditions. I would say you get better quality food in the home garden, but not necessarily cheaper either.
Whatever the scale, a lot of the initial cost goes into building up the soil, which of itself takes several seasons. To get animal manure, you’ve got to feed the animals. What you can grow for the animals on site, you’ve got to plant the seeds – buy mulch if you cannot grow enough. On and on…
That’s all prior to getting plants in the ground!
It’s a good point what Eddy Winko makes about cost of labour comparisons between commercial farmers and Milkwood, but I would argue the farmer isn’t actually ahead. As he has to take out bigger mortgages to afford the machinery which replaces workers. The commercial farmer is stuck in producing massive crops for cheap prices, but not actually getting ahead financially (same as Milkwood).
We’ve had a terrible season this year on our property. After all the floods leached the nutrients out of the soil, we now have scorching heat that is draining what life is left. The reality of improvement will mean I cannot wait to build enough nutrients on site – we’ll have to import it in, which means $$$. This will be to save what semi-mature fruit bearing trees, berries and vines we have – the vegetable patch is a write off.
These are the realities of food production, when the elements aren’t in your favour, and there’s a limit to how much you can absorb the increased costs. Like I said, it’s good to hear someone say it – the reality of producing food is not cheap, and despite what you spend there will be years you make substantial losses.
I had an idea to sell your produce slightly cheaper while reducing costs. I’ve read about farms which allow you to pick your own produce. The customer pays for the fuel to transport the produce off site, and they pay for the labour to harvest, clean and package: making sure they bring their own boxes/crates too.
Not sure if it would add more to your insurance premiums, but it’s a way of getting the community to share in the quality produce at a slightly cheaper price. They are bartering their labour and fuel costs, for a cheaper price of better quality food.
thanks chris! We’re 50 mins from the closest small town so i am not sure pick-your-own would work for us… it’s all about your parameters I suppose – sorry to hear about your garden!
I wasn’t actually trying to say that home-scale production is expensive, but we are having challenges with community scale production, partly because of the diversity of produce we’re trying to pull off in the volumes we’re aiming for… gotta keep learning and tweaking till we get the model right
“I wasn’t actually trying to say that home-scale production is expensive…”
I know that’s not what you were directing your post at
it was great to read what you had to share, specific to your situaton. But home-scale production IS expensive, which has gradually become my personal realisation as a home-scale producer.
When you migrate that home-scale production onto acerage, it doesn’t get any cheaper either.
The reason I think what you were saying and what I was saying are related, is because when home producers don’t take into account their living expenses, and the full operational costs of growing their food (like any primary producer has to) how can they appreciate how much food is actually costing them?
I know you weren’t saying it was expensive from your point of view as a primary producer, but I am saying it as a home producer myself, that when you consider you don’t live on land for free (unless you have a really great arrangement with someone who does own the land) then part of that cost becomes relative to growing your own food.
It’s not meant to be a criticism of the system – it’s just something I have personally realised over the years of home scale production.
Maybe, given your distance, a ‘pick your own’ bi-annually might work? Put the word out (bulletin boards, church/local newspapers – whatever is low cost and high visibility) and just see who comes. As well as the above benefits (you don’t have to incur the extra costs unless someone treads on plants etc), you might get to do a little educating and inspiring along the way.
maybe as an ‘Open Farm’ day or something and within that activities that include ‘pick your own’… anyway just a thought.
I have to keep thinking that the change is getting there. Wasn’t long ago you couldn’t GET organic f&v in the shops, now you can. Ditto to calico bags etc now you can. consumer demand will drive the market and what was a niche will become more mainstream (think free range eggs – they now occupy not just one product line anymore).
There’s hope. But yes, in the meantime, the challenges continue, along with the benefits
Hey Kirsten, My husband and I love reading your articles. We are ex-farmers and are fully aware of what it takes. Even the commercial farmer does not get paid enough for his produce. Our dream is to go back to the land and be self-sufficient – even with power and water (and it is getting closer). you are keeping our dream alive. Thank you!!
yr welcome
Great post Kirsten. I look at it this way as we labour away on our five acres on the edge of Brissie – the cost of seeds (often free) or seedlings, plus labour, plus free rainwater from gravity fed tanks, plus free cow poo from local biodynamic farm, plus free chook poo from our girls gives us our costs. Then we take off gym fees (which we no longer go to), other sporting hobbies (which we have replaced with weekend farming), shopping which we do precious little of now (well, it was mostly me anyway), grocery bills (which have dropped considerably), medical bills (as we don’t get sick as often), holidays away (as we really enjoy being at home now) and you come out with a much more digestible cost per kilo of what we produce, and we may even be ahead.
Thanks Sandy
– to C+P from my comment on Linda’s response blog post: I think the central thing i was trying to get at is that once you arc up from doing it all yourself, the play changes. If it was me doing all this (on a smaller scale) the embodied benefits would tally more directly and make it all ok. But as we’re scaling up to supporting multiple enterprises (the market garden being one of them) there’s more financial burdens and considerations (wages, super, etc), so I have started to scrutinize things in a slightly different way, as i think i must if we’re going to keep this boat afloat.
I’m left with the same conclusions, basically. It’s the right thing to do, many of the benefits are intangible and embodied in things/processes/outcomes other than said potato, etc. But i’m not prepared to tell Michael, who heads the market garden enterprise, that he’s getting paid only in intangible and embodied benefits this week rather than per-kilo for the amazing food he’s in charge of growing (even though, as a long-term permaculturalist, he would agree with that on one level – but he’s also saving to buy his own land). Hmm.
Hi Sandy. Do you cost in the feed you buy for the chickens, the land rates, various insurances, mulch, maintenance on the buildings, which deliever free rainwater, garden beds, shade structures, seedling raising areas, mortgage repayments, etc, into your costings of food production?
I used to believe living on the land was going to be cheaper, but wasn’t factoring the real costs we were incurring by running the property/animal/crops in the first place. I justified I was going to have to pay to live somewhere anyway, so threw the food production in as a bonus.
But it takes far less resources and money to run a property of under 1000 sqm, than it takes to run 5 acres. Less fencing costs, less animal housing costs, less animal feed costs, less fuel consumed for mowing, less fuel used to get from A to B (even if it’s not the shops you’d still driving to pick up the free cow poo, mulch, chicken feed, etc – often far greater distances travelled) and thus ultimately, more money spent on farm equipment, trailers, and all the rest of the paraphenalia it takes to run a property to get the higher quality food.
I don’t say this because there is no perceived benefit, it’s just not always priced in accurate dollars and cents. It takes more money/resources/labour to run a property for food production, and less for small scale backyard production. If one or both of you have to work off-site to earn an income, then your labour isn’t free either – it’s just been outsourced so you may think it’s not included in the food production costs. But if the labour wasn’t outsourced, could you afford to live on the property to produce the reduced cost food?
Most people believe property equals cheaper and a better quality of life (which in many regards IT DOES) but the bottom line hasn’t really changed. The costs will always increase according to scale. It was my consumer mindset which believed I could get something for nothing. I get more land and the lifestyle of my dreams, and threw in the food production for free!
Took us many years to understand how much is was really costing us for our perceived free entitlements. Just as it’s taken the Milkwood creators to realise how expensive it is to run a team to budget, to create the kind of food they want to grow. When you upscale, it will always cost more. Whether that is how much property you run, the quality of food you want to raise, the distances you travel for whatever reasons, etc: it always costs more in dollars and cents.
That is the reality most people don’t associate to the real cost of food production in their own economy. If where a farmer lives isn’t for free in their total food production costs, why is it deemed where individuals live, the cost of their food production is free?
Please don’t take offence at what I’m saying Sandy. It’s not aimed at you, but very much a reflection of my own views/attitudes too. I think when we have these frank discussions of our home economies, we start to realise the predicament of large scale food producers. At the end of the day, the Milkwood creators cannot continue absorbing the costs indefinitely, no matter how worthy their vision is. If they cannot find the means to pay for what they’re doing, they have to shut up shop.
I sympathise with their connundrum, just as I sympathise for all those home owners who casually throw in their personal food production in for free. It’s why they believe it’s cheaper to grow it at home, than to pay a person who values the land to produce food for many. It’s a connundrum we’re all in together, albeit for different reasons, but it still doesn’t quite add up realistically for anyone.
Hi Chris. We don’t do it because its cheaper. We do it as its the only thing we can do. We had a small suburban plot for several years but really wanted to do more, so we bought acreage (not a farm) as we would still have to work. And given I work in sustainability and community, and my husband in alternative food systems, its meaningful work that is worth doing. So while we are doing work we love, we are living in a way that feels more authentic (lower food miles, fresh food with no additives etc). So for us its a lifestyle choice that works and gives us huge pleasure. I agree with you that the economics don’t work otherwise as you do need off farm income, even if its training and education, as in Milkwood’s case. But I also believe that the economics of food pricing will be shifting in the next decade, so if projects like Milkwood can hang in there in the meantime, they may come into their own in time. Easy for me to say I know, but those are my thoughts.
Your thoughts are relevant Sandy and thanks for sharing them. I was wondering if others take in the full cost of home scale, or if it was just me that didn’t regard it?
We too enjoy the work on our land, but it doesn’t pay the bills unfortunately.
Hi Milkwood, I love your blog and your purpose and ethics. I think a lot if what you see is because we’re at the start of this new way of growing culture and the top price will drop as organic inputs become cheaper and the acceptable price will rise as people will learn of the benefits, and hopefully meet somewhere in the middle.
Beyond that though I’d love you to check out http://www.organicfarmshare.com, a community food enterprise I’m involved in. Essentially it is a poly culture, permaculture farm funded by owner members (like me) and some capital investment from the founders. The produce from this farm is to be sold solely (aside from excess) to the owner members and their target is to make it cheaper than other organically grown foods in the area. Their ‘shop’ is a converted bus, and one must be within 200kms of the farm to take part in the project in order to keep the food miles down.
It’s a great concept and one that addresses just this problem you describe…have a read, I’d be very interested to see what you think.
Keep up the good work.
Yes! I’ve been following this project since it started – a very interesting model… i’d love some specifics on costs for that one – glad to hear it’s working!
Hopefully Kirsten we should have some costings shortly. It costs $4000 to be an owner-member (fully refundable if you wish to opt out) and it has been estimated that up to approximately 350 families could be fed from this land. That equates to a working capital of about $1.4million if my mates is correct. I don’t think they have full capacity investment as yet and they prior to my joining they had already managed to purchase and pay off the land so they are rent free. The rest if the money is spent on infrastructure, wages, animals, seeds, etch etc. We’ve already got some pick your own food out of it but the real test will be what price they can sell their wares for…that I think is what will determine it’s success…hopefully the bus will be going soon…I’ll let you know
Awesome thanks andy
Thank you so much For this post!
I can only say, I LOVED your food when I was wwoofing, And I miss it. Can’t wait to grow my own… even if it some labor, or it costs more or a big challenge on my small semi arid island Curacao,it all is so well worth IT. I felt wonderful with the highly nutrient-dense food!
whoohoo! go well, lady x
This is something I’ve wrestled with a lot. I still don’t have “answers” – but one part of the equation I’ve identified is that farming has never really been profitable, especially when wages must be paid. That is to say – farming works really well to turn work into food, but it’s never done a good job of turning work into money, especially if you need to turn money into work and back into money. Either people have worked for themselves, and been “paid” largely in groceries, or they’ve had slaves, or migrant workers (aka, slaves) or children (slaves), or petroleum (dead dinosaur slaves) to do the work for so cheap that there’s money left over at the end.
If we can take petroleum and chemicals out of farming, can we also take money back out of farming? What if the goal of farming is never “making a profit”? Can that even work, what with the price of land and the other things we need cash for? Could we invent a kinder, gentler farm labor system that provides food and housing and medical care, plus a small cash wage, instead of a cash wage large enough to get food and housing and healthcare off-farm?
And, of course, people are going to have to get used to paying more for food. It’ll be a crisis for people who can barely afford factory food…unless, perhaps, they are willing to change careers to one that pays first and foremost in food (farming/gardening).
There is so much potential for abuse there, it scares me – but forcing farming to work in the current cash economy is simply a losing proposition, I think.
Oh how I wish I didn’t live so far away. Michigan, USA
But thank you so much for having the website. I just got back into gardening and canning a few years ago so there is a lot to learn. Your site is very helpful and excellently done.
Not sure that it’s been mentioned, but why not look into foraging? There may be a wide range of food plants in your area that do not require months of physical labor. Instead, simply a few days of respectful harvest.
I like where you are coming from Emily. I’ve had the opportunity to ask two questions over the last few years, to hundreds of folk wanting to become more sustainable. I ask first – “define for yourself the idea of a farm, what is it?” – It seems a pretty innane Q! But many who end up talking about healthy lifestyles are yet to realise that farming is an Occupation, not a job, not a hobby, and surely not all that easy/pleasant at times! I find myself ‘occupied’ by agriculture, you?
The other question only comes out sometimes, “How much is your dayjob really worth if you dont know where your food is coming from?” you’d be surprised how many folk cant comprehend the question. Even within the Agriculture industry.
I need to re-reference the source, but the folk who calculated the time input of every man woman and child to be growing their own food, for the food security of the world population put it at near 80% of every waking hour. How does that resonate with you hands-on folk doing food for real? No great surprise?
But I really need to point out, as a guy who simultaneously grows an 1/8 acre of potatoes, and for a day job a few thousand tonnes of spuds, economies of scale only provide proficiency of production, not efficiency. For small commercial growers like us, we figure out what cashflow our business needs to survive, extrapolate it over acres, project a margin and start working our bolloks off. Often, like the ABARE stats point out, we work the days and nights to get $7-10hr for our ‘time’, and our business considers this to be quite good compared to a national average. The market is there to be serviced, and it is our consumer who dictates the prices, supplied then, by the supermarkets who answer to shareholders profit before ethics, leaving growers who have extremely innovative and moral positions with last years example, maybe 10c a kilo for their potatoes for some varieties. Last year was one of the worst on record to be sure.
I wonder if the perception of value in a ‘whole’ spud has to compete with the social ‘experience’ that a consumer gets from his packet of crisps/hot chips/etc. any thoughts?
Thanks for such concise and courageous blogs kirsten, those veges might seem expensive, but this dialogue is priceless!
Aologies for the rant, I’m heading outside to bank up some home-grown Ruby Lou!
Kind regards
Cheers bigears. Love your work.
I know it detracts a bit from the intention to provide fresh nutrient dense food to and within the local community, but have you considered selling pre-prepared foods instead? The profit margins on prepared or partially prepared meals are much higher in the supermarket (as far as I can tell, looking at how much it costs to do the preparation and packaging) so that might offset the higher notional cost of the raw ingredients, since consumers expect to pay a lot more for the convenience. And even the most price conscious consumer can be tempted by something easy, tasty and time-saving where “rich person” potatoes might not tempt them so much. Just a thought
This has been a very interesting discussion so far. I basically agree with many of the statements made but wonder if economics can really relate to the benefits of lifestyle. I know if the economics aren’t there the business will fold but there are so many things that just don’t get included in economics. I grew up in an area back in the 50′s and 60′s where our neighbours on one side had bananas, tomatoes and beans as crops and the rest of their ex dairy farm ran a few beef cattle. On the other side those neighbours grew tomatoes while the rest of the property was a dairy. We had a dairy and a good vegie garden.
Our neighbour’s bananas were always there and produced as the season dictated and the price seemed to range from good to poor. Their beans and tomatoes were opportunistic crops and were only planted if the season seemed right and that the market prices seemed promising. I remember the Italian owners telling me once that sometimes you have to accept that at times you have to pay to send them to market but usually it was good to get the cheque. He said if you don’t have anything in the market you won’t get paid either.
Our neighbour with the tomatoes grew them as a cash crop and as soon as the market price dropped he walked away or ploughed them in.
So my thoughts at this stage are; you have to have things growing if you want to be paid and maybe look for niche crops or markets to extend the pay period or pay margin.
Also one of the things which seems to make the commercial crop growers more efficient is to be monoculturalists or growing 2-3 different crops on a rotational basis. They will run into problems before too long.
Prices today at the supermarket seem to be governed by what big business supermarket owners want to set and think the consumer will pay. They don’t care that a farmer somewhere usually many kilometres away has to take a cut in the price just so they can get it to market without really covering his input costs and give him an income. That same farmer usually ploughs in a fair quantity of produce just because it didn’t rate a prime product too.
Then there are the lifestyle credits which money cannot buy. Think living in the country, producing your own food and knowing what the inputs are and that there are no nasty things there, seeing a harvest for your labours and the health benefits of being able to eat locally grown fresh organic food.
There are some negatives to overcome such as distance from town and it being small too, being a new business, living in a climate of extremes. However, I hope you can stick with it, whether the same, upscale or downsize, adjust the number or types of crops grown and give the big business supermarkets a run for their money!
Great thought provoking post.
There are plenty of great and useful ideas here about lowering expenses, but it may also be heartening to remember that those supermarket benchmarks are only made possible because of a massive integrated network of fuel, distribution and fertilising subsidies ( often carried out under the heading of ‘food security’), and by cashing in on a limited supply of fossilised sunlight (oil, coal). And as such they are unsustainable, they will end, they will have to.
I love the way Geoff Lawton often says ‘This is the future’ when summing up on a topic. You could think he is just being optimistic, but I think he is bring us back to the literal meanings of sustainable and unsustainable. Its necessary because they are words thrown around flippantly these days, unsustainable is often used and taken in debates to just mean bad for the environment. But unsustainable thing must and will end one way or another, eventually sustainable food production will be the only benchmark for prices.
Of coarse none of that helps with paying the bills in the mean time. But it helps me keep my chin up when I’m out in the garden subsidising my food production with my own free labour.
Ian
yep we acknowledge the subsidy problem, and the future possibilities, but what I’m most concerned about is keeping small farms (not particularly ours, just in general) alive in the meantime… which is was what i was somewhat obtusely trying to get at
It is possible to run an organic farm and make money. We’ve been developing our own system, where we rely on very few inputs, do not have irrigation, do not have a tractor, employ properly paid staff and still make a profit – all this with 8 acres of veg and herbs.
It is possible to drop the price of our veg, but that is not a good way forward, as it sets a standard for our customers that is hard to increase when we need to make money in the future. We do though spend a lot of time educating customers on how to get longer life from their purchases, how to use the scraps to provide food, and how to look at food as a healthgiving resource rather than a means to end a hungry tummy.
On a commercial farm though there are some permaculture systems we just can’t incorporate as they are cost producing. The ideal is nice, but we also need to always keep an eye on the bottom line to ensure our staff have jobs, the bills get paid, and food is produced for sale. Overall though we’ve made it work, still create food that people taste and know is doing them good, and without compromising our values, we’ve been able to embrace a sustainable system that is somewhere between the two ends of the scale.
And…we sell our spuds at $5kg!
yep and you guys are doing an incredible job! wish we had a patch of the hawksbury river flats at Milkwood Farm
So do we….we rely on rain to wet our plants!
Gosh from Sydney I would have thought that $4 per kilo was cheap!!! I really think that this is a markting issue – I don’t have as much issue with food miles as I do with production method or with imported goods. Bring your stuff down
or as another commenter said transform it into prepared food and that way make a premium – I can see the Milkwood label on beautiful produced goods already 
HRH PC did a great job with this with the County of Cornwall label.
You have to go where you are appreciated
Hi Guys, Talking about market values…I would be really intersted in seeing some analysis done on which crops have the high market value / space ratio. For example, this winter I recorded what we harvested from the garden and then worked out the total market value of each crop using rates from a local organic f&v shop. I then calculated the total area of each crop in the garden to work out a value / area ratio. This obviously has most relevance to urban gardeners and probably doesn’t help with improving your bottom line (sorry about that) but I think could be really useful in the promotion of urban gardening / farming. FYI my top value / area crops this year were snow/sugar snap peas, strawberries, kale / silverbeet and rhubarb. I would love to see other sources of data and would be really interested to see how much variation there is and whether this could be linked to soil types, climate etc. Happy eating!
Yep definitely, that’s a consideration – personally we’ll probably move to on-farm needs (diverse) and then a couple of maincrops from next year on… Linda will you post your table of results anywhere? would love to see
– happy growing to you too
Last summer my tomato patch (2X4.8metre hoop house to keep out the fruit fly) yielded almost 300kg of fruit. I also harvested at least 4000 figs from 7-8 trees (2100 just in February) and when you value these at f/v market prices of $2 each, it makes the value of covering them for fruit fly at <$300 and drying them to be eating them every day until last week is also good value for money.
A most interesting thread to be sure…
Out of sheer frustration I’ve started growing my own, but not because I’m against the idea, or that I don’t like the work, but I don’t have my own land and I know that what I leave behind may not be valued by those who follow. However, I’ve wanted to support local organic growers, but they are in small supply and efforts to create some kind of registrar of who grows what and where has resulted in a single grower nearby who does a very fine range of garlic and another 5 kms away who maintains a totally organic vineyard. Garlic and wine can make excellent companions, but you can’t survive on them alone. Believe me, some have tried!
The price of organic produce hasn’t changed much since the late 1980s when I ran Round House Organics out the back of a permaculture inspired cafe / restaurant in Annandale, Sydney. We all wanted to make healthy, nutritiousness food available to everyone. But of course it’s not possible. Not even I can afford to pay an organic grocer for a weekly supply of veg, let alone eat out.
The bottom line for me is that everyone, and I mean everyone should have access to affordable, nutritiousness food. It’s not going to happen easily, but it is happening incrementally. Like Kirsty and others here, we don’t want to grow and market food to only those who can afford it, but the means to grow, to educate about the value of clean, fresh produce, the rekindle knowledge that was ordinary for many of our parents, or parents parents, and access to affordable land to do so is critical. The latter perhaps more important. It’s one thing having the desire and increasing know how to grow ones own food, it’s another all together having access to the land and other resources (seeds, mulch, etc) to make this all happen.
I can’t even thread a whipper snipper. I’m entirely reliant on people in my new found community to help me, from how best to use a brush cutter to pulling down a few trees (self-seeding black wattle) to both increase light over my garden and build up firewood reserves for winter. But when I’m done I’ll have hacked into another garden bed that faces east, that should increase my food security whilst I’m still here, but should create space for others who may wish to grow here.
One thing I’d like to see is the opening up of land, whether it be public or private, for communal gardens. We see a lot of this within the outer urban fringes of Melbourne, but I’ve yet to see this actually happen in rural Vic where I’m based, where there’s heaps and heaps of beautifully manicured pastures ringed by barbed wire in some places, electric fences else where and many, many uncertain boundaries.
I’m excited by the garden projects in city spaces, the pavement activities, the excellent opportunities afforded to every day spaces.
At the end of the day all these issues, all our efforts, the more we share and openly discuss them, as Kirsty and co are doing so here, the more potential, and tangible potential at that, to the, perhaps audacious (and I say, why not?) desire to provide affordable, nutritiousness food for all.
We’ve spent lots of time wondering about the issue of good food costing more than crap food does. The whole point of our farm is to demonstrate that you can produce the best quality food, cheaper than the industrial giants while improving, rather than simply not destroying, the environment. We do this with meat rather than vegetables, but I think the principles are the same; but perhaps not the numbers.
Our method is simply to attempt to remove all external inputs. We are steadily selling off our machinery and making deals with our neighbours to do the work for us. We allow the feral pigs to intermittently turn the topsoil for us and break the hardpan, which encourages birds to come and pick through the soil for grubs and seeds, both fertilising and spreading seeds. Any scrub or weed clearing is done by placing salt licks in the place we need cleared; 200 cows and 1000 sheep make a wonderful bulldozer. We’ve also reached an agreement with the foxes, where they keep the rabbits under control and we don’t shoot or poison them, but we strongly encourage them not to take lambs. Where fetility is an issue. we look at our grazing management, rather than buying fertilisers.
None of this is revolutionary and plenty of people are doing the same. The point is that we can sell meat for 80% of the supermarket price, still get more than we would from selling into the commodity market and we’ve reduced our costs to almost nothing. I don’t know if the same can be done for commercial vegetable production, but I think if anyone can do it, you probably can.
Thanks for the blog post – i’ve been thinking about similar things as we are preparing to grow vegies for part of our income in the future (small scale, direct to customers). There is a general expectation for vegies in the supermarket to be cheap – and people complain about the costs of even s’mkt vegies going up (i’m guilty of that too
I think vegies in the supermarket world are competing with many other foods that are made from very cheap ingredients mostly at the expense of nutritional content. So even the big farm business producing the s’mkt vegies isn’t making much money and often going out of business. I think there is a slow groundswell of new appreciation of fresh produce from the homegrown/farmer’s market angle that will spread to others as it becomes easier (more convenient) to actually buy local and know your grower. Appreciation of why organic/produce from healthy soils is superior will take longer for many people.
I wonder if, when you are calculating your Milkwood OMG costs they seem high now because instead of big machinery, there is still much investment in new processes, “training” of sorts and perhaps other things and the costs will end up being lower in future?
I am thinking that this is a developed country issue, we spend very little of our income on food and have come to expect that. If you go to the ‘third world’ suddenly food costs most of your income each week. Unfortunately until price shocks occur, and local resilient people grown food becomes valued (or all that is available), I think you will have to subsidise your system with those that are willing to offer labour and love for food and knowledge. There should be more and more of those people as things turn to shit
Soldier on champions !!!
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