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Real
prices. Real food. Real community.
The GRASSROOTS OPX™
Setting prices for sustainably raised and organic
vegetables, fruits and value-added products always
poses a dilemma.
How can you tell customers enough of the “story”
of your well-farmed crop to explain all the benefits
that come with a tomato, a jar of jam or an heirloom
eggplant. How can they understand how much more
they are getting in this local food transaction
than they get from the grocery store at the end
of the industrial food chain?
You want your customers to compare “food
system for food system,” not “apples
for apples.”
The right price for farmers at a market reflects
a mix of their cost of production, seasonal factors,
what else is for sale, the quality/variety of
the offerings, and the preferences and spending
habits of the market’s full range of customers.
The certified organic wholesale produce prices
at our OPX provide a sense of the premiums that
organic gets for the uniform, processed and packaged
products sold at the wholesale level. For street-level
prices, you need more than prices. You need an
understanding of the market, its location, its
clientele and the weekly variables that influence
price and offerings. That’s what our corps
of volunteers do each week. Look for it, starting
in early May. Better yet, be a volunteer price
reporter yourself. Just email New Farm associate
editor Amanda Kimble-Evans at amanda.kimble-evans@rodaleinst.org
and let her know you’re interested.
The coming season’s Grassroots OPX will
be all new and improved. You’ll be able
to compare the products and prices at two specific
markets, look at prices from all the markets in
a given state, or look at the prices for select
products from all markets around the country!
Put your favorite market
in the index.
Click here to join the Grassroots OPX™ reporting
team now!
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