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Pick Your Own

Some categories of food show up all at once and require more hours of labor to pick and process than any farmer, local or far away can process. You are guaranteed to save some cash if you pick your own fruit and berries.

Efficiency Gains

• Farmer doesn't have to hire temporary workers

Costs to Consider

• Driving. In the DC area, PYO requires on average 45 minutes to 1 hour of driving.
• Hours spent picking. The bigger the fruit the faster it is to pick. In the case of pumpkins, you probably are not saving the farmer much money.
• Hour spent processing (freezing, canning). If you can freeze it, processing is cheap until you feel you need to buy another freezer. Obviously, if you get too fancy with processing, the time spent processing may outweigh your savings.
• Your Labor. See end of page to calculate.

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Community Supported Agriculture

Farmers don't know how much food they will grow in a season. A CSA subscription divides the farmers output among the subscribers. This also cuts down on marketing costs, as CSA

Efficiency Gains

• Farmer can shift risk of not know how much will be harvested to the buyer.
• Farmer saves on marketing costs as all output is sold before the beginning of the year.

Costs to Consider

• Spoilage. If you don't process or consume as it arrives, it will spoil.
• Driving. Most CSA have pickup locations that are closer than the farm.
• Your Labor. See end of page to calculate.
• Small loss of variety. Most CSAs try to grow as large a variety of crops as they can. This also drives up a farmer's costs as they can't specialize. On the otherhand, specialization has some costs, such as increased susceptibility to disease and insects.

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Car Pooling, Multiple Stop Shopping

A lot of locavore foods are only available directly from the farm, such as PYO and some wineries. Cut costs by combining as many stops in one trip as possible. Generally on a good day in Loudon, you can visit a farmer's market, a winery, a pick your own, and a farm stand all in one trip.

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Buy in Bulk

In some parts of the world, urban dwellers beat the high costs of food by buying in bulk and slowing using it up over the winter.

Efficiency Gains

• Farmer saves on marketing costs and storage costs.

Costs to Consider

• Spoilage
• Significant loss of variety in diet
• Requires specialized processing and storage to keep it through the winter.

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Eat In Season

If it isn't in season, it was probably stored or grown at great expense.

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Grow Your Own

Efficiency Gains.

• Cuts out the supplier and the middleman.

Costs to Consider

• Land costs (ignore if you wouldn't have done anything else with the land anyhow)
• Seed costs (cheap compared the market value of the harvest)
• Your Labor. See end of page to calculate.

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Know the Exceptions

Greenhouse grown, locally-processed-but-not-locally-grown foods are often much more expensive than food shipped in from far away. This may also be true if you are only pay attention to externality cost (like how much air pollution the food creates)

They aren't providing the same benefits that sun grown (non-greenhouse) and locally grown food provide, so you might as well buy the cheapest from where ever it happens to be from.

The arguements about beet sugar vs cane sugar that economists make hold true in the world of local foods. Consumers and the environment would be better off eating cane sugar than the corn syrup and beet sugar that are made artificially preferable-price wise due to taxes, tariffs and quotas. In the case of local foods, consumers tend to ignore honey and maple for lack of culinary imagination.

Keep an eye out for the common "Especially made for XYZ farms" products, which usually are jams, jellies and pickles of crops from places unknown.

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Calculating the Cost of Your Labor

One analysis is to say, "Well, I picked 5 lbs of cherries in 1 hour, and I saved $5 over what it would cost in a store, I earned $5 an hour" This analysis ignore that fact you could have been dong something else, like working at your regular job.

Another analysis is say, "Well, I'm a dentist and I earn $100 an hour so a bucket of cherries that took an hour to pick cost $100 plus the cost of the cherries" If you had to an unpaid day off from work to go pick cherries, this analysis is completely correct. Otherwise this is sometimes correct with some qualifications.

Quality of Work Life. In real life our work hours are limited by our desire to live a life with a diversity of experiences. If we didn't spend an hour picking cherries, would we be happier having spent an extra hour at the office?

Entertainment. Some Virginia farms charge admission. This looks like a two-price-tariff (similar to the membership fee at costco), but most of these kind of farms are charging admission to combination of PYO, hayrides, picnic grounds and other entertainment. The first hour or two of cherry picking is a fun, pleasant change of pace. The 80th hour is drudgery and work.

Overtime If you are on salary and have already worked 40 hours at your normal wage, you can make yourself better off by picking your own since you can't earn more by working longer at your regular job.