How can producers calculate market costs clearly? Market marquee
On a recent farm visit tour that had just ended, I discussed many topics with friends from the market along the way, from farmers' choices regarding facility construction to home-grown fruits and vegetables, and on to agricultural production at an economic scale. Every small reflection could only be mutually confirmed after we had gone to see things on the ground. So Master Ah-Mao, who is good at writing some nonsense pieces, wants to use this article to show everyone some of the decision points farmers face when choosing whether to take part in a market, and also to let us understand farmers' own market cost studies.
To know the ins and outs of a market, first know a thing or two about the marketplace.
Recently I often have the chance to share the ins and outs of running a market with different groups of people, and lately I often say this: running a market six years ago and running one now are completely different situations. Six years ago, you had to call one by one and work through layer after layer of relationships to find farmers to join an unknown field; six years later, farmers hold up a magnifying glass to examine a market's business condition, management mechanism, and subsequent operational status.
These changes are closely related to the shifts in policy over these six years, the rise of new markets, food safety issues, and other factors that have helped organic agriculture gradually form an industry. Among them, I think the biggest impact should be the recently promoted New Taipei City one-organic-meal-a-week school lunch program: about 350,000 schoolchildren, and in a single meal they eat about 35 tonnes of organic vegetables from Taiwan. This one meal a week almost eats up the output of all of Taiwan's productive organic vegetable farms, and the remaining farms either have too small an output or already have established partner distribution channels. And because of this infinitely promising pie, some well-known enterprises have rushed to invest in production…
Due to policy support, the school lunch program absorbed medium-to-large, high-output farms, which rushed to join New Taipei City's school lunch program, and the market left vacant was supported by small and medium-sized farms, such as small organic stores and related distribution channels. That is what produced Master Ah-Mao's article about farmers' distribution channel choices, cultivation patterns, and cost calculation problems.
The preface has gone on too long… but only with a preface can everyone deeply feel how strong that pull is, and the situations I discuss later will also let everyone relate more easily. (Let us continue.)
Different markets, greatly different cultivation patterns.
Generally speaking, if some farms with output also want to enter New Taipei City, then their cultivation pattern will inevitably have to be adjusted to greenhouse and net-house cultivation to ensure stable output. Next comes control of product types, mostly aiming for one vegetable per greenhouse, because aside from making harvest timing easier to control, fertilizer application, water control, and pest and disease management are all factors to consider.
However, the consumer market of a farmers' market and the consumer market of distribution channels are completely different in form. The consumer market of a farmers' market involves small quantities and diverse cultivation; you cannot expect consumers to eat water spinach and bok choy every day until the end of the season. So growing different and diverse vegetables in the same greenhouse or the same production area becomes a technical obstacle, and even without a technical obstacle, it complicates the work. This is also the reason most small farms cannot bring their costs down, because it is simply too labor-intensive. (But small farms have the advantages of small farms, and they are relatively more favorable to consumers; we can talk about that another time when there is time.)
