Reminder about the Spring Plant Sale and 1st Annual (of many) New Mexico Hard Cider Festival. May 2nd. Saturday. 9am-5pm at our warehouse, 3435 Stanford Dr NE. We will have plants and cider available all day. Judging from previous years, get there early for the plants. I cannot believe how many plants we sell on that day. We will have more plants than ever, but early bird gets the worm in this case. Hope to see you then.
Second piece of housekeeping this week is a call for some more help around here. Our sales and members have been growing and look to continue to grow into the summer. With that, we need some more help around here.
We are currently looking for some help with our warehouse prep and packing. If you have a Black Thumb and still would like to be a part of our team, we can use you. No grocery or produce experience needed (we train well around here), but we are looking for folks with great positive energy, attentive to details, and with a passion for healthy foods and the local food movement. These two positions will be full time.
In light of these job postings, let me just quickly say that we are so fortunate for the people we have working here. I slap my name on the newsletter so people see my name more than others, but we truly have a great team here. Every time we have a tour or show people the operation, no one ever leaves mentioning our delivery vans or tractors. It is our team that always sticks with folks.
There is not a lot of money to be made in farming and healthy foods. Competitive price pressure from bigger stores makes it very difficult to follow the dollars. With that, everyone here at the farm really works hard knowing that we are fighting the good fight. In the David and Goliath world of feeding people, the small dude is not supposed to win. Not only are we not supposed to win, but we should not even be in the game. But every day as we all show up here, we prove that wrong. And little by little the landscape of local foods is changing. This is what keeps us all fired up and coming back for more.
On a national level, sales of Organic products were up 11% in 2014 over 2013. Sure those aren’t any Silicon Valley start-up numbers, but they show a very promising direction for the state of Organics nationally. Organics has seen growth better than 10% year over year for over 2 decades. If you are reading the tea leaves, this really shows that eating healthy chemical-free food is not some fad like some folks once thought Organics would be.
Additionally, it also shows that Organics is not the “Yuppie- Food” that people once criticized. With more Organic production, we are seeing three important things transpire—increase in availability, increase in quality, and a decrease in price. All of these things are positive steps for any food movement. Change is happening and with continued/sustained double-digit sales growth, it does not seem to be going away.
I have said for a long time and still believe that Organic agriculture is a viable way to feed an expanding population. Organic food has historically been more expensive because of demand-side pressures rather than supply-side issues. Meaning that the demand for Organic products has outpaced the increase in supply every year. When that happens with any product, you will see increased price pressure.
Now, as more local, regional, and national producers choose Organic growing techniques, you/we will all see prices continue to drop. I think soon (if we are not there already) it will seem silly to hear folks use the excuse “I cannot afford to eat Organically.” That argument just does not hold true any more.
This makes me smile, I have to say, because from the beginning our goal has been to feed entire communities, and not just parts of the community.
Happy munching,
Farmer Monte