Growing locally and sustainably with water conservation and zero-carbon footprint is nice if you can do it.
It’s also expensive, said Robert Tornello of 3 Boys Farm, a hydroponic outfit in Ruskin.
Especially when you add strict food safety documentation, greenhouse infrastructure and trained labor costs of $12 to $16 per hour.
It’s less than half that in places like Mexico.
“When a driver at $15 an hour has to do a three-hour round trip, plus fuel and overhead, to deliver three $30 cases of greens at 15 percent gross profit, you realize that the system is broken,” he said.
Rebecca Krassnoski of Nature Delivered has sold her naturally raised pork to restaurants like The Refinery and Pearl in the Grove. Here’s a little bit of her math:
Her cost to raise a pig to slaughter weight is $240 to $300, plus $50 to slaughter it and $50 to transport it.
So, let’s say her total cost is $400.
That whole pig, minus entrails and hair, will weigh 192 pounds.
If she sells it at $3 per pound, that’s a sale price of $576.
“I make $200 if everything goes well,” she said.
“That’s on a perfect day.
Ten thousand dollars a year is not a living, she said, but “nobody wants to pay $6 per pound for pork.”
Most restaurants can’t, or won’t, pay her what she needs to live.
“I can’t think of a time when my chops have been served at a restaurant on a daily basis,” she said. “I think a lot of times farmers with a good story are used as a billboard.”
And another thing.
While it’s fun to nosh house-cured ham biscuits and sip small-batch bourbon in a dining room festooned with antique wheat scythes, for the people who actually grow the food, this isn’t reality.
Farms tend to be where farm-to-table restaurants aren’t, said Craig Rogers, shepherd-in-chief of Border Springs Farm in Virginia.
Your not truly getting what's told you on the menu...
“The average farmer hasn’t been to a restaurant any fancier than Applebee’s,” he said.
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