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Setting Prices



How do other folks balance getting a fair price for everything they offer
at their CSA versus the desire many of us have to include folks at all
economic levels?

At Ash Grove I charged $50 annual membership to cover newsletter and
infrastructure items such as chemical toilets and wash stations along the
hay road, and the $1200 per year extra liability insurance I had to carry
in order to allow "civilians" onto my property.

The remainder of our $300 annual minimum fee was based on harvest bags of
$10 per week in June, $12 in July, $15 in August and September, $12 in
October.  Per-bunch and per-pound prices were based on that week's grocery
store prices for commercial produce plus 20% to account for the fact that
our stuff was organically grown -- it still cost about half what the stores
charged for their organic produce (when they had it available).

I asked for the first third of the annual "Harvest Share" payment by March
1 to cover seed purchases and certification fees, second third by May 1 to
cover supplies purchases and plowing, final third by July 1 to make sure
we'd be able to pay our weeding and harvesting helpers.

Some people expressed appreciation over the break-down so they could better
understand how and why I needed some money before they actually got their
produce.  Other people called me a faddist opportunist, yet others reviled
me as a communist.  Go please the world, right?  <VBG>

One year I tried to make it easy on everybody, cut out the member fee and
just sold "credit cards" good for $50 worth of produce.  Only two people
that year bought more than one card, 90% of the purchasers lost them (the
only record of how much they had purchased and how much credit they had
remaining).  The next year my attitude was "support this farm with a $300
commitment or see us at the market if we have any surplus that week".  I
had fewer members that year but it was a heck of a lot more fun because
they all cared.  I learned CSA Lesson Number One:  Success is not always
measured by numbers or dollars.

Absolutely committed to CSA as an expression of social justice in
agriculture, I accepted USDA Food Stamps but gave that up when the one bank
in the area that had agreed to hold a pass-through savings account without
a fee changed their minds and started charging $5 a month.  I only
processed $200 per year in food stamps, losing more than 25% to the bank
tied my knickers in a knot and I closed the account.

Offered working shares instead.  Gosh, that needs a lot of organizing and
supervising!  I still have a problem understanding how people can be so
disconnected from their agricultural roots that they can't tell the
difference between a weed and a crop plant even after you've spent fifteen
minutes with them demonstrating.  My newest plan for this is.....oops,
that's another thread, I think!

Discussion?  Ideas?  How do others set their prices?

Dori Green:  Writer, Farmer, Facilitator
Ash Grove Community Farm & Center for Sustainable Living
http://www.servtech.com/public/funfarm/index.html