Organic and Economy

[Bossroo]

A friend of my son in law's is a manager of the meat department at a local grocery. He tells me that there is now a noticable downturn in the organic meats and vegatables purchases at his store. They are now throwing away unsold products and are starting to order less for the foreseeable future. McDonalds showed a 4% increase in the fourth quarter in sales mainly due to the $1 meal deal. They anounced this morning that they will be opening 1000 new stores worldwide. More chocolate comfort food, beer, and soft drinks are being sold than last year. PG&E had a 5.6% rate increase for electricity started this past Jan 1. Gas prices have jumped 30+ cents over the last 2 months. How will the ever increasing higher cost of feed, electricity and biofuel affect your plans to raise your chickens? Will you start to purchase more of the traditional grown farm products ?

 

[CovenantCreek]

I'll probably raise more, eat more of my own produce (eggs, chicken, veggies), and sell more. What I save by not having to buy at the store plus whatever little bit I can get when I sell makes up for the economic & opportunity costs of keeping chickens and growing veggies.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Same here. I will be raising all of our meats and produce for the most part this year. I want to be able to put a years worth of meat and produce in the freezer for the year and sell the rest.

It makes people realize that it's cheaper to raise your own food than to buy it in the store. Also makes you experiment in other varieties of meat. For instence I now eat a lot of rabbit which I wouldn't think would be very good. I happen to love the meat, a good fryer is just as good as chicken. They are cheap to raise and efficient.

Luckily for me a lot of my customers either have money or they don't. I'm in a very good location and this will be interesting to see how much the economy has made an impact on the millionairs pocket books. I have a lot of customers that make an average amount of money but with the economy taking a dive I'm not sure how many of them can afford $3.50 per dozen for eggs. Same goes for the meat, I had to raise my prices in one years time from $2.40 / lb to $3.00 / lb. The cost to keep things going are always climbing. It's tough but a lot can be learned from tough times.

 

[Pumpkinpup]

Ditto, I will just be more self sufficient than ever.

 

[gckiddhouse]

We don't farm or garden other than as a hobby. The beets in our garden will feed us for a meal or two and then we start something new. It is just fun. We do raise our chickens on organic feed and will continue to do so. We sell a few dozen eggs to offset the extra cost.
As far as organic foods for us, we already don't get most of them at the "grocery" store. We are involved in co-ops that supply organic and natural foods for much less than the grocery stores. We won't change much. We also hunt every year. We eat mostly wild meat and the organic chicken that I buy from our co-op. We do buy wild caught fish at Costco. As long as those sources continue to supply, we will continue as usual. We are cutting back on eating out though.

 

[silkiechicken]

Raising veggies is for sure cheaper than buying it from the store. But, raising meat, unless you can grow enough veggies and grains to provide a proper diet for the meat to grow, has always been in my experience much more expensive than commercial protein.

 

[dancingbear]

The cost of raising birds for meat, for me, is somewhat offset by my egg sales. I sell enough eggs to buy almost enough feed for the layers and the meat birds. If I manage carefully, mixing my own to raise the protein content, rather than buying broiler feed, I can feed both pretty cheaply. Plus they forage, that reduces feed costs. I don't raise chicks in the winter, so I'm not fighting cold weather while trying to spur growth.

My garden will be bigger this year, I'm crossing my fingers that I can water it this year. Much will be in containers, to make that easier to do. More produce will be canned this year, rather than frozen, so will some of the meat. This last week's ice storms and power outages (ours was out for 6 days) have me re-thinking a lot of things!

The quality of meat we raise is better than the store-bought, and that's important to me. I can't buy organic meat or produce for what it costs me to raise it myself. Plus I can sell extra produce, too.

 

[AHappychick]

Quote:
ditto, and for me and my family not eating organically is not an option I am willing to consider so I just pinch my pennies else where, instead of beef this year we ate almost exclusively venison and I will be stocking the freezer soon with new chicken and will start fishing once that is all consumed at well. I consider myself lucky my mother made all of my meals when I was a child and the closest thing we had to fast food was pizza (live in ny so not pizza hut type pizza) I can count how many times I have had Fast food (like McDonalds) on 2 hands in my lifetime (I am 33) so I never even consider it never occurs to me that it is even a food option when I am hungry. I do have a weakness though and that is Dunkin Donuts iced coffee but I almost never go because of the cost. over $3 for coffee is insane!

 

[sandspoultry]

We added on to our garden area and will be planting some more fruit trees. Our climate here is great for a year round garden. The greens and root crops we planted last fall are still doing good and this weekend we will be planting peas and spinach. We have bought exactly zero poultry from the store in quite a few years now. The pig and goat pen is a work in progress- the fine tuning of the poultry is coming first since they pretty much pay for themselves and turn a profit. There is nothing like sitting down to a meal that comes all from your farm.

Steve in NC

 

[Harp Turkey Ranch]

This year we actually lowered our prices by .50 cents. We are at $3lb and 2.5lb with 40lbs or more an order. We have been selling at almost the same rate as last year. We didn't have to lower our prices but we wanted to help out our customers that might not have as much money as they did last year.