Monday, June 8, 2009

Do you think about your food?

We ate at A&W a couple of weeks ago. I barely enjoyed my burger (not that I ever enjoy fast food burgers) thinking about the feedlot.....I LOVE LOVE LOVE Taco time, but don't think I can eat there again. Stories of the fast food buyers taking old worn out dairy cows, and dirty stinky feedlots have affected me. We watched "King Corn" such an eyeopener - these two guys leased an acre from an Iowan farmer and grew an acre of corn and followed their acre to the produce line...Showing us all involved in raising the acre of corn including all the herbicides, fertilizers and etc that was sprayed not to mention the government subsidy programs in the states. Next we watched "1/2 Tonne Teen" and see where all the corn products are going, SHOCKING. More than 3500 calories a day per person are produced by US farmers, so someone has to eat them.... I digress, as usual. We don't eat beef in our house anymore, I used to diss my mother about all the wild game she fed us, but wow, am I lucky for that influence in my life. Hubby now hunts with her each year and we have a freezer filled with organic meat. If they didn't get anything I'd buy a side of beef from a local farmer. I wouldn't ask the price. Do many people think about what they are eating? Do they see that the $30+ dollars we spent at A&W would buy a heck of a lot of organic strawberries? I ask this because I'm trying to come up with our pricing this year. We jumped up last year a bit and this year I'd like to jump again. We are WORKING OUR BUTTS OFF HERE! More than ever. Do people care? Am I going to hear complaints about the price if we raise it? Do they reallize organic fertilizer is 4x the cost? The weeding cost is unmeasureable - oh for the days of $1oo worth of herbicides taking care of your problem for the year.....not that we ever did this, but the farmer guy did...and it worked. I'm so torn in this year of economic recession and I know that all the long time retired customers will be hit by a raise (actually only wanted to go up less than 3% on prepicked and 12.5% on UPICK...so that's probably not relevant) Are our customers really going to care that our strawberries are organic? I guess that is the question.

2 comments:

hillbilly jillies said...

I think about our food everyday. I know that we would pay the price for organic strawberries.

Frogcreek said...

We would pay too! The ones who get it will. Maybe have a print off or send to your regulars about why it would be rising, like you did here. Maybe if the knew exactly what they were paying for...