Time for a price increase

As the price of fuel to transport these items from the larger farms rises, local farms which do not have to carry the cost of long distance transport will become more competitive. I'm seeing this where i live too. Prices are going up, yet the cost to produce my products has barely changed.

Milk here is $ 2.40 a liter which is about 36 ounces. 4 liters can be bought in a jug for anywhere from $6- to $8.00. Eggs for grade A large in the stores start at $3.95 and go up to almost $5 a doz for jumbo eggs. Pee wees are $3 a doz and organic and free ranged eggs are much higher. This is why we keep a doz hens!

I realize there is a certain reward for selling your eggs to locals for less and this may be enough to offset the fact that by doing it you are losing $1.00/ doz. The prudent business model for maximum profit would be to sell every egg you could at the higher price and market the "leftovers" to your local clientele at the lower price.

I've sold eggs for $2.50/dozen a few years now. I deliver to a customer when we 'go to town' and she wants almost every dozen I can sell her. I may raise the price to $2.75 come late summer.
Wish we could get local milk from a farmer. I pay $3.59/half gallon of NON-homogenized, pastuerized milk in a glass jug.

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There is also a matter of A1 vs A2 milk. Most milk in the US is unfortunately A1.
I make no claim to being an expert, don’t even raise cows, but here is what I believe: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mer..._b_558447.html
As a side note, Guernsey milk is the best tasting raw milk I’ve ever had, hands down!

Food prices are very regional. Where I live now (Northern VA) there are no stores that offer double/triple coupons, and prices are what they are.

I moved from this area to Utah for a few years and got an education on cost of living. I went grocery shopping at the exact same grocery chain and bought the exact same foods in the exact same quantities...and my grocery bill dropped 30%. When I came back to VA to visit, I at the prices in the store, because I had forgotten how expensive everything here was. I when I had to move back, because it flat-out hurt my feelings to pay 30% more for the same foods. Plus they had stores that doubled coupons in Utah

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We hit the Aldi's the other day in West Plains and prices were okay.....milk at 2.99 a gallon, veggies fairly priced but the best deal was the pineapple for 99 cents....

when I got a case, the lady's eyes almost bugged out.... but with 4 kids at home, we can mow through some fruit....and it was a nice treat..... plus my littlest daughter had never carved up a pineapple....

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I pay upwards of $4 for local certified organic free-range large eggs, and that's in the warm months when the hens are on point. During the winter I flat out can't afford the good eggs. Farm fresh milk?? $5 a half gallon for homogenized, $8 for non-homogenized. Commercial organic milk runs about $4 a half gallon. Your prices seem would be low in my area, Abe. Heck, your milk is nearly in line with mass-produced generic brands.

we are also in mo, just outside kansas city. Our store eggs are less than $2, in the summer we get fresh eggs down the street or at the amish auction for $2 a dozen. Store milk is $4.20-$4.50 gallon but we get raw milk for $4/ gallon
My kids like the raw better and will guzzle it. But i find its not as sweet as store milk- does anyone know why? Do they add sugar to store milk?

If your demand is so high then gradually raise the price over a period of six months or a year to find the right price.

Egg prices vary tremendously place to place. We tried doing eggs but couldn't make money at it. I find it is better to boil our tens of thousands of eggs (we have 300 to 500 hens) and feed the eggs to our grower piglets on pasture. This gives them a boost from weaning and is economically a better use of the eggs. It also saves me a lot of costs associated with egg cleaning, packaging, government regulations, etc. In a location where eggs sold for more the answer would be different.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

North of Dallas things are a whole lot cheaper.
1 gal milk = $2.29 (Kroger)
1 doz eggs = .99 (Aldi's)

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Reading through some of those prices, I am really thankful that I live in rural Iowa.
Meat is mostly on the higher side; Pork is the cheapest followed by chicken. Beef is rather pricey for my budget but most people say it is less than in other locations.
Farm eggs are running me $2.5/doz and the fellow brings them to my work when he's coming to town otherwise I can pick them up at the farm but I have a 12 mile drive so I buy enough to last until his next trip to town.
At the farmers markets, I could buy farm eggs from local flocks for $1.75/dz but I stick with my farmer since he is so accommodating, even if he charges a bit more.

Milk is from the stores here, but I buy Prairie Farm which is a Coop of local farmers. The whole milk runs about $4.30/gal and 2% is cheaper at around $3.95
I don't think we can buy or farmers can sell raw milk here but I'm not sure since due to some medical issues, I won't drink raw milk so I've never researched it.

I'm anxious for the Farmers Markets to start back up; last year I was buying inspected local farm, pasture raised pork for incredibly low prices-$2.50/# for bacon, $1/# for ground pork as well as seasoned breakfast sausage. Pork chops were sold individually for 75cents each and they were at least 8oz ea!

This year, I will be starting my own small flock of chickens; not because it's cheaper but because I miss having chickens and the eggs & meat are wonderful side benefits.

They add sugar! They also add other things, just can't remember them all now..

Walter, you amaze me. Thanks for the post. I am trying REAL hard not to look into pastured pork. Ideas like that are a true asset to the forum. I would have never considered taking the eggs and turning them into piglet feed. I have to wonder, though. Does the yield from your chicken feed expense cover what your normally would have paid for some sort of purchased food for the pigs? Is there some other rational for raising the chickens? Do you have a chicken-addict like my DD?

The chickens are largely a life lesson for DD. I am a business owner off the farm. I am not blind to the actual costs of small scale farming. The egg sales alone won't even come close to the liability insurance premium on the property, let alone the truck. When I started, the quick napkin-ware math on layers in small quantity didn't add up. But, like I said. Life lesson. Plus, I needed to officially rule them out. I've seen what a profitable egg producer looks like. I don't think I'll try to replicate it.

In the startup years, I have kept my accounting very simple. By operation/livestock group, I am just tracking

SALES - (FEED+OTHER DIRECT EXPENSES).

I am not considering fixed expenses during startup, because I have a slightly altered motive. I have just 6 groups: beef, dairy cattle, dairy goats, meat goats, layers, and meat birds. For starters, I didn't know how to market the goods. Add on top of that, I didn't know how to actually produce (without regard to costs). So my motive has been to find 1 or 2 from that list of groups that can cover the whole enchilada. I will shuttle the rest either immediately or over time. Those that don't add up but which I don't shuttle will have sort of a Polyface angle to them. Perhaps like your eggs to piglets feed supply.

The purpose of this thread wasn't to discuss the price of eggs and milk across the land. But I suppose if I bring it into discussion, its fair to throw in there. Besides, it was somewhat interesting. What I really wanted to talk about was the perceived value of real food and the relationship of its price vs. non-real food. (like that found in the grocery store.)

Walt, I used your site for information when I bought my first live hog for processing. It is my perception that you know a thing or two about marketing live-on-the-hoof-livestock-direct-to-consumer-via-processing. Do you ever check on the price of a pound of pork chops at the grocery store? We all know it is not the same product. But to the person that routinely buys that family pack of chops, that is the market price barrier that is established for us. It was the sight of that giant tube of 80/20 ground beef that caught my eye the other day. I thought, "man, they better be giving that away." When I saw the price, I saw opportunity....

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That is sort of what I have come to realize. I did not notice the price of store milk creeping up. I don't think my fellow milk producers have, either. One of my regulars is from out your way. That alone should have been an indicator that something is up with the $5/gallon model.

I haven't had milk from a plastic jug for eons, so I don't quite remember the taste. When we last bought from the store, it was from Shatto (for those not around here: a regional dairy that is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between big ag and small dairy in terms of philosophy). When I switched to Shatto, I don't recall any perceived difference in flavor. But I liked it because at least I didn't feel like the victim of some twisted eugenics strategy.

Shatto would be my closest in-store comparison. But theirs is homogenized and it isn't even close in taste to our what our three mutt dairy girls produce. Shatto's customer is my customer, though. I didn't realize that they had crept all the way up past $3.50 / half. I think I have a money-making candidate.

I think beef is my other money maker. I've lost all hope in getting beef flavor from something in a store/restaurant. But I have to be honest. I have been hit/miss myself. I still have some learning to do on the production side. But when I figure out what makes the palette sing, sales will be easy. I am gearing up to go through a period of "giving beef away" to shorten the R&D cycle. I just can't learn enough by slaughtering 1 a year for myself. You want to know the craziest lesson I learned this past year? Never "give away beef" at the auction house. Never again will they see any thing but the shiniest, perfect, black steers from me. And it looks like I'll have plenty of those. The rest? $7 ground beef. Compared to that mystery tube at $5, it is a gift.

Lamb is my other possibility. I haven't even started with sheep, with the exception of 4 freebie bottle-fed Katahdins. I love lamb on the plate. I can evangelize lamb. My only concern? I actually think store-bought lamb tastes good. I am not certain I can produce a different product for a discerning customer.

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Honesty and integrity are homesteading virtues.

I don't sell anything that we grow or produce, but I will say that pricing is the trickiest part of our retail business. We struggle most days with how to price our items.

I think the tough part is finding the sweet spot between making as much on our product as we can, and the buyer thinking or believing they are getting great value for their money.

We had a product that we sold at the flea market for 1.99, and people were buying it by the case. Walmart had the exact product for 2.78. We sold out of the product, and when we got another shipment, our wholesale price went up .19 each. Our margins were slim at 1.99, so we went to 2.29. (Walmart went to 3.14, IIRC) When we moved our price up to 2.29, it totally killed our sales. We might as well have gone to 3.29 or 6.29 because the item quit selling altogether.

All that I am saying is be careful. You might start gently educating your customer about feed and fuel costs over the next few months. I've seen plenty of people really mess up the delivery of this message, almost with a hateful tone. I often use the line "We are doing everything we can to hold the line to keep our prices down, but it is hard."

all I grow are veggies,no weed killer(we grow under mulch plastic.customers are great with 3/$1.00 cukes.our red potatos always sell out-I wont quote prices here.sometimes we're cheaper than the store,sometimes we're not.BUT our veggies are better quality.u can walk into the field and wipe the dirt off and just eat it.the local stores have raised a lot of prices in the past 60 days-and their produce looks terrible(I wouldn't buy it!with all the drought/freezes cheaper/fresh produce may not happen soon if at all.i'll hold to last years prices at the stand,but if fuel still climbs-i'll have to raise delivery prices to the local store at least.we grow real food!

Best prices for dairy and eggs by us is at . . . the Holiday Gas Station! No fooling - 2 gallons of their milk for $6.50 ($3.25 per gallon), eggs at $1.79 per dozen, and butter at I believe $2.29 per pound.

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We have no chicken feed cost because in the warm months our chickens eat pasture and in the cold months we feed pastured pork (butcher scraps) to our chickens. The meat replaces the bugs the would catch in the warmer months. We don't sell eggs or chickens - they're just support staff.

The primary job of our 300 to 500 chickens is organic pest control. They free range over the central 10 to 20 acres of our farm eating bugs. We raise about 400 pigs out on pasture. The chickens break up the manure paddies, catch insects, provide eggs, smooth the soil and are part of the system. We are also just up mountain from a marsh and in a forest both of which supply additional chicken food, er, mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, moose flies... With the chickens the insects are not a problem. Without chickens the bugs are nasty.

Actually, 88% of our sales are weekly standing order wholesale to stores and restaurants. My wife is out on deliveries as we 'speak'. She has about a 400 to 700 mile route that she delivers once a week. (Length depends on which route she's doing as she has some sections that are weekly and some that are every other week.)

Yes, I follow the prices quite closely although I am very conservative about adjusting our prices. The reason I do not change our prices much is that meat managers for stores and more importantly the chefs at restaurants need stable prices to be able to plan their menus. Part of what we give them is that stability and consistency.

Hmm... But I don't try and compete with Tyson, Smithfield and the other Big Boys. They know how to lose $5/pig and still make a buck. They drive their farmers out of business on a regular basis (I have a cousin who was one) but depend on starting up new suckers, er, I mean farmers, to replace those. It's really a different market. As you note, they aren't the same product. Not in flavor, humane raising, ethics, pasturing vs confinement, local, etc. So what we do is offer what we have. We are constantly sold out.

Cheers,

-Walter
in Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Last year, I started selling eggs to coworkers at $2/ dozen, and everybody loved them. I had two coworkers with a standing order of 3 dozen a week each. Then in mid-July the stray dogs slaughtered 1/3 of my layers in one afternoon, and between that and fall molting, by mid-September I was barely keeping my own house in eggs. By January the molts were long over, and last summer's chicks came on-line, so the eggs were flowing again. I told my customers on Jan 2 that due to feed costs going up, the price was now $3/ dozen, and nobody blinked. This week I took 13.5 dozen to work, DW took 4 dozen to her work, and all but 3 dozen were pre-sold. Still doesn't cover infrastructure or our time, but greatly helps the feed bill.

Our customers love the mix of colors in each dozen, ranging from near white, to blue, green and browns.