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"PS: They might say be operating a stall at a locally grown market, but it's the stall not the farm that's generating income." If the stall sells products comi
by Kurtz79 9y ago
"PS: They might say be operating a stall at a locally grown market, but it's the stall not the farm that's generating income."
If the stall sells products coming from the farm, the difference is lost on me.
It's like saying "it's the Sales department that generate income, while Engineering is just a cost".
- jonreem 9y agoThe difference is that (as I understand it, not at all an expert in agriculture) the stall would generate nearly equal income if you just bought produce from another farmer and sold it at the stall.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoif Eve Online taught me anything, this is correct. Either you buy produce wholesale and resell it with a markup, or you spend the time / effort yourself. It's really a cost vs time / effort calculation. Of course, if things scale up - like, if the demand for artisan cheese becomes higher than the microfarmer can produce - buying the materials in bulk and slapping the own brand on there becomes more attractive.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 9y agoIf Engineering was creating a product you could buy from China for less, then yes, it's the Sales department creating >100% of the value.
- gwright 9y agoIt sounded like the difference between production and distribution to me. Perhaps it is hard to differentiate for a tiny farm. But it becomes obviously different as the volume goes up and the farm begins selling to a distributor.
- freeone3000 9y agoLots of companies exist of just sales, with no engineering at all, and they're doing fine.
- jbob2000 9y agoPut it this way - if you bought your apples from the grocery store and sold them in your stall, it would probably sell just as well. It's the experience of going to a market and buying from a stall that people like, NOT the produce.
- goialoq 9y agoIf that were true, than how is it even possible for a farmer to get a spot at the stall? Why aren't they crowded out by grocery arbitragers?
- Anderkent 9y agoBecause there's certainly skill involved in the successful managing of a stall. It's not that anyone could buy from the grocery store and sell at the stall and make a profit; just the people who successfully make profit on a small farm. The suggestion is that the customer knowledge/access is what is providing value, not the farming.
- cdubzzz 9y agoLast week a train broke down on the tracks between our house and the small produce market we usually go to. We didn’t want to wait, so we turned around and went to Giant (the large super market in our area). It had been a long time since we got produce there and it was absolutely terrible. I forgot how much better the local stuff we get is. Most of the time, I will only ever go in the morning because the place fills up in the afternoon and I generally dislike “the expiernce” of going there. All this to say, in our case, it absolutely is the produce.
- JCharante 9y agoThis is very reminiscent of EVE Online's "I mined it so it's free" fallacy. In that, the player is mining minerals which they then use to manufacture a product in order to sell it, but they often sell the product for less than they would have by selling the raw minerals or lose out in opportunity cost because manufacturing yields a higher $/t, and once you scale up you can't supply your own minerals anymore.