One of the things that drew me into farming in the first place was the fact that I could wrap my feeble brain around the basic transactional level of it. I had no interest in having a remote and specialized role working for a large entity whose end product or service I didn’t completely understand. From seed to farmer’s market table, I could be involved in every step. All I had to do was focus on growing the best produce I was able to and if the customer liked it they gave me money for it, if they didn’t they didn’t.
Of course there is a lot more to it than that, but for better or worse, farming is as pure of an example of the free market in action that I know of. Although we have largely stayed out of the wholesale end of things, I am close enough to it to realize that the laws of supply and demand are in firm control. Growers plant what they think they can sell in a given season and hope for good prices. But growers around here are all subject to the same set of variables and, in general, when one farm’s strawberries start to produce heavily–everyone’s do–and prices plummet. It is common during the peak season for growers to get less for their produce than their “pick and pack” costs.
I used to assume that there was some kind of marketing board that imposed order by determining who planted what when, but that isn’t the case at all for the crops grown around here. I befriended a fellow who worked behind the counter at the local tractor dealership who had previously worked for a now-defunct lettuce and vegetable farm that sold entirely on the wholesale market during the 60’s and 70’s. He told the story of one of the founding brothers who hired a driver to take him on a circuit through the Pajaro and Salinas Valleys and out into San Benito County to check on his competitors every week. After the driver pulled up beside a newly planted field, he would walk out and dig up a few seeds to see what was being planted. They didn’t want to be planting a 40 acre field of iceberg lettuce at the same time as their competitors because they would all mature at the same time, causing prices to fall. That is how they made their planting decisions–crude but effective.
Things have changed a lot over the ensuing decades. The laws of supply and demand were subverted when the larger growers became more adept at moving refrigerated produce over long distances and realized that they weren’t tied to a single location. They started adding production in places like Yuma Arizona, the Imperial Valley in Southern California and the Huron Area in the Central Valley where they could grow vegetables that would hit the market during off-season times when the prices were much higher. Farms like Driscoll’s have taken that concept to extremes by spreading production to such far flung places as South America, Spain and Australia, allowing them to offer an uninterrupted line of produce year-around to markets around the world.
Indeed things are much more complex than I ever understood them to be, and where things go from here I have no idea. But I’ll continue to stand behind my farmer’s market table and offer up our humble produce.
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