Apples for sale by the bag.
Looks nice, huh! Look more closely. Here are some Ambrosias.
See all that marking? These apples are worth zero. In a modern world of cosmetic fruit, these can’t be sold, so they’re being sold off the back of a 5-ton truck for $8 per10 pound bag — as if this were a family farm and not an agribusiness.
That’s more than the farmer would get if they were cosmetically perfect. This situation won’t last. I saw this before in the 1970s. Troubled times are back.
Wait: they’re worth MORE off the back of a truck, imperfect, than sold conventionally if perfect?
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Well, let’s see:
at produce markets these apples would go for between 50 and 90 cents, depending on surplus. The farmer would get, what, half of that, so, let’s say 25 to 45 cents. These are 80 cents, to the farmer. In the supermarket, the price goes up, but 99 cents is probably expectable for non-refrigerated fruit,, and of that, with packing and shipping and retail costs, the farmer is probably getting that 25 cents. It probably costs 20-30 cents a pound to grow the fruit. So, to the farmer, these are very lucrative. But you can’t move volume this way. A 5 ton truck to sell five bags of apples a day is not sustainable, I’d say.
What I was trying to say is that the farmer is relying on retail price structures and marketing fashions to sell his culls at what, for him, is a premium price. If they weren’t selling here, they would not sell.
I think trouble is coming. This smacks of desperation, the kind I’ve seen before a generation ago.
.
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Reblogged this on Sable Aradia, Priestess & Witch.
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And let me guess: there’s probably a bunch of guys hoping to buy his orchard so they can grow grapes? I love wine. Who doesn’t? But it hurts to see those old orchards — even the newer orchards — turned over to vineyards.
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Probably lined up to grow vegetables or hoping to hang on until the land reserve is broken so that they can grow houses. It’s Vancouver construction money behind the orchard industry now.
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