Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
On-Farm Sales
One of the simplest marketing strategies is to sell your goods on the farm
itself. The distinct advantages are that you control everything involved with
the sale and are close to your work. You are normally paid immediately, and
since there's no middleman, whatever money you take in is yours — before
paying suppliers and taxes, of course. On the other hand, your farm is not
likely to be on Main Street, and you must ensure that you bring in enough
customer traffic to sustain the enterprise. The possibility of personal injuries
and the issue of liability are more of a concern when you bring customers
onto your farm, and curious customers and their children can disrupt farm-
ing operations by wandering around and getting into things they shouldn't.
Do not let these considerations scare you away from on-farm marketing,
however, because good planning will reduce their impact to a minimum.
If you do plan to market directly, make sure your farm is designed to ac-
commodate customers and that the design is suitable for your products and
the clientele you are marketing to. For example, if you are selling a few car-
tons of plums or apricots to neighbors, your entire sales facility might be the
back porch or kitchen table. For a higher volume of customers or a more di-
verse range of products, a roadside stand or salesroom might be more appro-
priate. If your produce is sold U-pick, you will need a stand or room where
the produce can be weighed, packaged, and paid for.
U-Pick
Also called Pick Your Own or PYO, U-pick is well suited to fruits and veget-
ables, particularly crops like peaches that have some obvious characterist-
ic indicating when they are ripe. With this approach, the customer has the
responsibility of harvesting and transporting all of the goods sold. For that
reason, your expenses for harvesting, packaging, storing, and transporting
will be lower than if you do those tasks yourself. You also get paid immedi-
ately and do not have to worry about shipping and postharvest spoilage. One
disadvantage is that you need a sufficiently large local population (whether
