PPT062: Joel Salatin talks about the marketing and business of craft foods

Joel Salatin joins the show and we use his recent book Your Successful Farm Business (Amazon) as the back drop to the conversation. High points of the discussion:

• Your Successful Farm Business dives into the people, the marketing, the time and motion studies, and the nitty gritty about how to think like a business person.
• Marketing is morphing rapidly, especially logistics.
• There’s a lot of “disturbed ground” between the farmer and how stuff gets to the customer.
• Is Amazon acquiring Whole Foods good? Who eats the price cut of this downward price pressure?
• The take on relationship marketing.
• Build it and they will come is a fantasy. You’ve got to grab ‘em.
• Earn Trust = Conviction + Consistency + Communication.
• Joel’s take on the biggest bottleneck: Processing or marketing?
• Speaking of pastured poultry processing, “How do we message living food and the whole story of helpful bacteria?”
• Moldy cheese is cool. But bacteria on a chicken is somehow different.
• The processing regulatory climate is tough for very small plants and most farmers or consumers don’t have any insight into it.
• What’s the reason for the high farm failure rate? Cash flow is one of the biggest issues. Pastured poultry brings cash flow as an asset, but seasonality is a challenge.
• People have fantasy expectations about farming. Your Successful Farm Business sets realistic expectations and helps you operate from a position of reality.
• Unrealistic expectations turn bumps in the road into bigger issues than they are.
• Need to develop mastery through repetition and nuance.
• Joel believes in dabbling before you commit. “It’s ok to dabble.”
• Create a one-year nest egg that can support you without any income. Be “cultishly” frugal.
• Wendell Berry’s essay “Home Economics” talks about feeding yourself first. Those dollars don’t have to be earned, and there is no tax on that.
• Half of America doesn’t have access to $400 in cash. What does it mean for direct marketers?
• Food Inc, cured Joel on what people could afford. You could get two pounds of Polyface grass-finished beef for price of one Burger King meal when that movie came out. Applebees is $15 a plate. A pastured poultry chicken can feed six people with leftovers. We need to help people understand the comparisons. At Polyface, a broiler is less per pound than boneless/skinless chicken breast in the supermarket.
• Joel explains why eclectic awareness is important in the context creating points of commonalities.
• Polyface supplies a local Wegman’s, but how does that jive with Joel’s idea that we should be spending more time trying to get people out of the grocery store?
• There’s an old business saying, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

Resources

• Polyface Farms
• Your Successful Farm Business by Joel Salatin
• You Can Farm by Joel Salatin (precursor and prerequisite to Your Successful Farm Business)

Sponsors

• Small Farm Nation Academy with Tim Young
• Order Ready to Lay Pullets in Pennsylvania