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De Forest, WI | It is not because we don't want to. Access to Capitol is very hard to come by. Banks will not loan money without a secured buyer and collateral.
It is imposssible to get to that scale without commitment from national chains. Even regional chains are usually too small. Peppers are grown in Ontario and sold in the Midwest in Costco almost all winter. They get a dollar per pepper. That is seriously good money. The sad part is that ONLY Costco sells these high quality peppers. The local groceries sell crap from Mexico and gassed toms from the south. All of that stuff tastes like cardboard, but it's cheap.
I am very small scale. I have two truck loads of butternut squash in storage that I can barely sell this year. I am competing with small gardeners who sell to one grocery here and one there. In abnormal year they would all be froze out (literally) by now and I would sell out before christmas. The weather is so warm that these jokers leave product outside in sub optimal conditions and sell a substandard product. The only thing going for them is they sell below production cost because it is a hobby for them.
This screws the market up for those of use who are trying to make a go at a larger business. Were still too small to get contacts from big chains and have to compete with back yard gardeners for the "local" sales.
I called one local store and told him I would match the warehouse price on everything I had. This after the guy complains a lot of his produce comes in half rotten from the warehouse. He tells me no sale unless I beat the warehouse price by a significant margin. I just don't get it.
Most of our sales go to restaurants and wholesale distributors. The restaurants pay a decent price and order consistently, but in small amounts. The distributors buy enough to justify terminal market price, but they won't commit to anything with a contract. Lettuce and sweet corn are the two most profitable, easy to market crops. Especially lettuce.
Veggies are not hard to grow. Selling them for a profit is the hard part. | |
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Why don't US guys guys grow high value crops??
