slysurfer14 said:Look, obviously we're talking about revenue. How much of that is actually profit is a whole different story...
With Wheat, the profit is tiny, but with other crops it's way higher—something our local farmers just don't seem to get...
They just don't get it, you say? Let's put it this way: you see better margins in field crops like sunflower, canola, or maybe soy if the weather doesn't bake it into dust...
But let's talk about vegetable farming...
I personally tried my hand at butternut squash twice. First off, it's back-breaking work. Secondly—and here's the kicker—I would have made the exact same money if I'd just gone to work for a daily wage at $8.25 an hour somewhere else. The difference is that in a standard job, your only real risk is someone stiffing you on your pay for the day (around here, they pay $6.75 an hour, but you get cash the same day... so the worst case is losing one day's pay). I'm just trying to illustrate the gap...
Forget the squash, though; let's look at sweet potatoes. Some of my colleagues grow them, and honestly, if I managed to pull in $8.25 an hourly rate, they might scrape together $10... yet growing sweet potatoes is three times harder and the risk of total LOSS is massive. It isn't a matter of "I'll make $10 an hour"—you only make that if everything goes perfectly. If things go sideways, you aren't just broke; you're in the red. It's like taking a job where, at the end of the shift, you actually have to pay your boss for the privilege of working there...
The reality is that in vegetable farming, someone is always squeezing the margin, leaving you to work for peanuts while they take the cream. We aren't stupid; it's just that many crops simply aren't worth the hassle. For instance, my uncle planted plums specifically for Maraschino cherries years ago. You wait years for them to bear fruit, everything looks great, the prices from the producers are actually fair—they're quite decent—but then, after two years, they just stop buying. There are no other buyers, or the offers are so low it's not even worth the harvest. You can't pivot to brandy because it's a specific variety—say, you need 10 lbs of fruit for one liter of spirits, whereas a standard variety gives you a liter from just 2 lbs (I'm no distiller, but that's the ratio). People try all sorts of things, only to get cheated or left stranded when the sole buyer pulls out. I know a guy in a neighboring town who grows onions for Walmart; he does a fantastic job, but he's the only player in town. He floods his 7 or 8 acres, and Walmart doesn't need a single onion from anyone else in the area. The rest of us can't just plant onions because there's no market for us—there's a market, sure, but the terms are predatory, so nobody bothers...
