Pigs in the Fog
The old adage goes that it's easy to grow/shepherd/raise food for sale, but it ain't so easy to sell it. I was well aware of that axiom when I began farming, and I'm even more aware of it now. It's just not easy to market any farm raised product. This year our challenge has been in selling our pork shares.
Last year we sold all four shares available, and we have only modestly raised our inventory to six shares this year. The goal with our pork sales is to sell the best product in the region at the highest fair price. In pricing our pork, I look at the actual costs of production and the prices other farmers in the area are asking. Based on my current figures, it costs about $400 to raise a pig born on the farm to slaughter (that includes the partial cost of the sow and boar). We originally offered our pork at $4.50/lb hanging weight which gives us revenue of $742 per pig (based on 165 hanging weight at 6 months). I didn't factor in the cost of pasture rent, insurance, seeding, fuel, etc, but that's probably at least another $50-100. So we're talking about a profit in the range of $242-$292 per pig based on how I do the accounting. I haven't calculated the time required to produce a single pig for market, and I'd like to get a better idea of that in the future. But at my target pay of $15/hour, that's about 20 hours per pig. When you think that I spend over 400 hours on pig chores alone with only 10 pigs right now, 20 hours doesn't sound unreasonable. In general, I'd rather trade labor costs for debt and high infrastructure costs.
A quick look at other farms with that rely on custom slaughter and promote their pork as heritage/pastured/etc. like us: $4.75 hanging weight, $5.50/lb hanging weight (butcher fees included). The craigslist price is about $3/lb hanging weight (this is what you can get if you want to buy pork from some unknown person on craigslist who doesn't have a website or coordinated marketing effort. Bruce King charges $2.25/lb, which is about the lowest I've seen in the area. So there is a wide range in price, but unless you're getting tons of free or low cost feed, there isn't much range in feed costs. I imagine that most craigslist folks are trying to just break even.
After getting a few repeat orders from our customers from last year, we didn't get any new orders this year at our original price. About a month ago, we added 50 lbs of organic squash and potatoes grown on our farm (a good deal for our customers and a sensible deal for us as we produced more than we could sell at the farmers market and farmstand) per half pig. In a perfect world, we'd sell those vegetables for $50, which means we're increasing the cost of our pork to $500, and bringing our profit down to about $150/pig.
Now, with just a week to go before slaughter, we've decided to lower our prices--not because we think our pork and our time isn't worth the cost, but because we don't want to be stuck with hundreds of pounds of pork in our own freezers. We've lowered the price to $3.75/pound plus the potato and squash bonus. That gives a very small profit of $50-100 per pig. It's a tough decision, but we'd rather grow into strong demand than put all our efforts into marketing. We're open to other marketing options in the future, but for now, we just want to make it through this year!
Last year we sold all four shares available, and we have only modestly raised our inventory to six shares this year. The goal with our pork sales is to sell the best product in the region at the highest fair price. In pricing our pork, I look at the actual costs of production and the prices other farmers in the area are asking. Based on my current figures, it costs about $400 to raise a pig born on the farm to slaughter (that includes the partial cost of the sow and boar). We originally offered our pork at $4.50/lb hanging weight which gives us revenue of $742 per pig (based on 165 hanging weight at 6 months). I didn't factor in the cost of pasture rent, insurance, seeding, fuel, etc, but that's probably at least another $50-100. So we're talking about a profit in the range of $242-$292 per pig based on how I do the accounting. I haven't calculated the time required to produce a single pig for market, and I'd like to get a better idea of that in the future. But at my target pay of $15/hour, that's about 20 hours per pig. When you think that I spend over 400 hours on pig chores alone with only 10 pigs right now, 20 hours doesn't sound unreasonable. In general, I'd rather trade labor costs for debt and high infrastructure costs.
A quick look at other farms with that rely on custom slaughter and promote their pork as heritage/pastured/etc. like us: $4.75 hanging weight, $5.50/lb hanging weight (butcher fees included). The craigslist price is about $3/lb hanging weight (this is what you can get if you want to buy pork from some unknown person on craigslist who doesn't have a website or coordinated marketing effort. Bruce King charges $2.25/lb, which is about the lowest I've seen in the area. So there is a wide range in price, but unless you're getting tons of free or low cost feed, there isn't much range in feed costs. I imagine that most craigslist folks are trying to just break even.
After getting a few repeat orders from our customers from last year, we didn't get any new orders this year at our original price. About a month ago, we added 50 lbs of organic squash and potatoes grown on our farm (a good deal for our customers and a sensible deal for us as we produced more than we could sell at the farmers market and farmstand) per half pig. In a perfect world, we'd sell those vegetables for $50, which means we're increasing the cost of our pork to $500, and bringing our profit down to about $150/pig.
Now, with just a week to go before slaughter, we've decided to lower our prices--not because we think our pork and our time isn't worth the cost, but because we don't want to be stuck with hundreds of pounds of pork in our own freezers. We've lowered the price to $3.75/pound plus the potato and squash bonus. That gives a very small profit of $50-100 per pig. It's a tough decision, but we'd rather grow into strong demand than put all our efforts into marketing. We're open to other marketing options in the future, but for now, we just want to make it through this year!
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