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Right-Sizing Your Farm: Aligning Scale with Your Goals
33 Plays13 hours ago
In this episode of Hort Culture, the team explores the many facets of scaling horticulture operations—from small market gardens to multi-acre farms—and how those decisions affect production, marketing, labor, and personal lifestyle. They discuss how growers move from hands-on producers to business managers as scale increases, and the importance of aligning farm size with personal goals and family needs. The conversation covers retail versus wholesale sales, labor management, equipment investments, and the risks of burnout when scaling too fast. Drawing on Kentucky’s agricultural history and emerging trends like high-tunnel tomatoes and cut flowers, the hosts offer practical insights on balancing the economics of scale with lifestyle choices, market realities, and the nuances of different distribution channels.
Scaling Up Your Vegetable Farm for Regional Markets
K-Card Beginning Farmer Resources
UK Department of Ag Economics Publications, Budgets & Decision Aids
Center for Crop Diversification Decision Tools
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
Recommended
Transcript
Pizza Croutons: From Idea to Salad Innovation
00:00:16
Alexis
Hot tip that probably everybody else has already known or thought about that I have not and tried for the first time today.
00:00:19
Plant People
Okay. Okay.
00:00:24
Alexis
Leftover pizza.
00:00:26
Plant People
o
00:00:26
Alexis
But.
00:00:26
Brett
I have tried that.
00:00:27
Alexis
But.
00:00:27
Brett
Oh, sorry.
00:00:28
Plant People
Yeah, I've tried that.
00:00:29
Alexis
But.
00:00:29
Brett
Okay. Sorry.
00:00:31
Alexis
When you know you've had too much – and maybe this doesn't happen to you all, but sometimes I eat too much pizza, even like the day before, and then the next day I eat too much cold pizza, and I'm like, hey, I need to throw ah vegetable in there.
00:00:37
Plant People
ah Is that possible? You say peaches or pizza?
00:00:44
Alexis
And so I'm like, wow, I have all this lettuce from my CSA share, and I need to eat it before it goes bad.
00:00:44
Plant People
Peaches.
00:00:49
Alexis
Okay, okay, listen.
00:00:49
Plant People
and o
00:00:51
Alexis
but You make yourself the little salad. But then you take a piece of pizza. You chop it up into little squares. You throw it in an air fryer or under the broiler.
00:01:00
Brett
Pizza crouton.
00:01:00
Alexis
You make pizza croutons and you put them on your salad.
00:01:03
Brett
wow
00:01:04
Alexis
Boom.
00:01:05
Plant People
Poutons. We've created a new food.
00:01:06
Alexis
Hot cake.
00:01:07
Plant People
Not poutine, which is a northern delight.
00:01:08
Alexis
It was not my idea. I saw it on an Instagram reel. And if I could remember her name, I would shout her now out because
Balancing Indulgence with Health: Pizza and Greens
00:01:15
Alexis
it's my life.
00:01:15
Plant People
I don't know, Alexis. I don't know.
00:01:17
Alexis
it's I'm telling you.
00:01:17
Plant People
This feels a ah little bit of like the DeLorean and Back to the Future where just feed it garbage and it runs off of that ah to time travel. I feel like you're going to time travel.
00:01:26
Alexis
That is my entire immune system. I'm not sure where you're going with this.
00:01:28
Plant People
you're yeah ah Alexis, dear listeners, yes.
00:01:30
Brett
And it is firing on all cylinders.
00:01:33
Plant People
good Yes, Brad.
00:01:34
Alexis
Listen, it local lettuce from my CSA. I don't want your crap, okay?
00:01:39
Plant People
I don't know. You just...
00:01:40
Brett
It's not the lettuce part that we're...
00:01:40
Plant People
did You just told us to dehydrate basically a pizza.
00:01:46
Brett
Yeah.
00:01:46
Alexis
better Better it was stuffed crust.
00:01:47
Brett
Distilling. It's distilling of a pizza.
00:01:49
Alexis
So was like cheesy. Just pop that on top.
00:01:51
Brett
I really like this idea. i Is it, is it when you say you've eaten too much pizza, you you mean that you're sort of tired of it as a aesthetic?
00:02:01
Alexis
No, I'm never – I'm usually not tired of it because that's where like you still get the flavor. It's usually more of – if I eat more pizza, the amount that I want to eat without a vegetable, like my digestional systems like system is going to be yeah weird.
00:02:18
Brett
I see.
Creative Food Combinations and Personal Tastes
00:02:20
Alexis
And so I'm like, okay, I need to eat some salad, but also there is pizza in here, –
00:02:20
Brett
i gotcha.
00:02:24
Plant People
um i I'm still looking for the frame for this. I mean, I feel like the pizza is being, can I think it's an interesting take because you have like the tomatoes are making their way back to the salad.
00:02:28
Brett
It's
00:02:36
Plant People
Like they're going home.
00:02:36
Alexis
Some mushrooms, a little spinach.
00:02:38
Plant People
Yeah.
00:02:39
Brett
like Finding Nemo.
00:02:40
Plant People
It's kind of like homeward bound finding Nemo. Yeah. I mean, this is sassy. The cat finding her way home people.
00:02:41
Brett
It's a... Yeah, Homeward Bound. Yeah.
00:02:47
Brett
That's right. Chance.
00:02:48
Plant People
Yes. Yes.
00:02:49
Alexis
Well, listen, if you're out there, try it. Let me know you how you appreciate Because obviously, Ray Tackett does not. But we are not here to talk about croutons today.
00:02:57
Brett
Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:59
Brett
I'm here to talk about how Ray is wrong.
00:03:01
Plant People
Yes, about how I'm incorrect on deep fried and dehydrated pizzas.
00:03:02
Brett
That's good for any other day of the week.
00:03:04
Alexis
Any other day of the week. That's our backup episode.
00:03:07
Brett
Well, yeah, we could do the freeze-dried, like freeze-dried pizza, then turn it into little nuggets that are...
00:03:11
Plant People
Yeah.
00:03:12
Alexis
It's a whole thing. Like every farmer's market has a freeze dried section now.
00:03:14
Plant People
um I feel like if you took the pizza and either dehydrated it, air fried it, or deep fried, with deep fried, never mind. I was going somewhere. as i totally got I feel like if you did all these things, you could take what little joy I had and then you could just also do away with it.
00:03:29
Plant People
so Yeah. Anyways, anyways, don't touch my pizza.
00:03:33
Alexis
We're just toasting it up. That's all. we're just It's extra crunchy.
00:03:35
Plant People
Okay. Okay. I mean,
00:03:37
Brett
Yeah.
Transitioning Farm Operations: Challenges and Opportunities
00:03:38
Brett
Well, I just another, another mechanism for getting some vegetables and tangs and flavor in with the pizza leftover pizza would be to put it in the oven to crisp it up and warm it up and then put some, some sauerkraut right on top and fold and go sort of a, you know,
00:03:41
Plant People
yes.
00:03:49
Plant People
oh
00:03:49
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:03:51
Plant People
I feel like we're going to renegade on this pizza concept.
00:03:52
Alexis
One time when I was in the early throes of the full-size farm of flower farming and it was spring and I i needed to go pick some, don't know, plugs or I was picking something up from a fellow farmer.
00:04:07
Alexis
And it was late and I was exhausted and it was just me at home. So I stopped and I got a Little Caesars pizza. Well, that farmer also gave me a bag of kale. And so I drove home with putting like whole kale leaves on top of my Little Caesars pizza and eating it in the car. Because I was like, I know I need some vegetables, but I don't want to do anything.
00:04:28
Plant People
So you just made like a kale sandwich or something like a, um okay.
00:04:28
Alexis
So it's also delicious. Yeah, kale pizza sandwich.
00:04:33
Plant People
Okay.
00:04:33
Alexis
Highly recommend. And get that iron.
00:04:36
Plant People
Hopefully it kept your hands clean. I mean, I'm looking on the bright side of this conversation.
00:04:39
Brett
i would go kill I would go pizza croutons before I would go kale pizza sandwich.
00:04:40
Plant People
We just, I think I would, i think i agree with Brett on this.
00:04:44
Alexis
du Listen, when you're really tired, you got you do what you got to do. Okay. It's for health.
00:04:49
Plant People
Yeah. Okay.
00:04:49
Brett
yeah Genius is never appreciated in its time, Alexis.
00:04:50
Alexis
Health.
00:04:52
Plant People
No, because it doesn't live long enough due to food poisoning apparently.
00:04:53
Brett
Just keep that in mind. anytime Anytime anyone ever contradicts you, you just say, genius is never appreciated in its time.
00:04:56
Plant People
look
00:05:03
Alexis
Noted.
00:05:03
Brett
Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:04
Alexis
Noted.
00:05:06
Brett
Well, you were talking about, you were talking about the, the throws of the larger farm.
00:05:06
Plant People
And insanity is not quite.
00:05:07
Plant People
ah twenty
00:05:12
Brett
um
00:05:12
Alexis
um
00:05:13
Brett
and And you were at another, another site before.
00:05:13
Alexis
Scaling up, baby.
00:05:16
Brett
Right.
00:05:17
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:05:17
Brett
And I assume like, if you just put it, put a picture on it for us, or
00:05:18
Alexis
Yep.
The Complexities of Agricultural Scale: Insights and Anecdotes
00:05:22
Brett
I don't know what, um put some numbers on it.
00:05:22
Alexis
okay
00:05:24
Brett
Like how, how big was the old spot versus like that you could possibly use versus how big is the spot that you can use now?
00:05:32
Alexis
Um, so I was in about 3000 square feet, probably a little less than that. But that's really, you know, I had one, I think about 50 by 50 bed and then or maybe 50 by 30.
00:05:47
Alexis
And then another bed that was a little bit smaller of like,
00:05:50
Brett
feet by 30 feet. Yeah.
00:05:51
Alexis
Yeah, 53 by 30 feet.
00:05:52
Brett
know
00:05:53
Alexis
ah And then some pots and you know just some various stuff like that. But I was on some rented land as well. So I was kind of limited in what I could do and what I had available. ah But was in a good spot.
00:06:04
Alexis
And that was what I started on and how I made money and to pay for bigger things and to finally put a down payment on my farm and all those all that good good stuff.
00:06:05
Brett
four
00:06:16
Alexis
But yeah, very very small. And you can do a lot in horticulture in a small area. so
00:06:21
Plant People
Uh-huh.
00:06:21
Alexis
oh we'll say 3,000 square feet roughly
00:06:24
Brett
Yep. And now, not how much do you have in, but like how much, if you wanted to go full tilt, all the all the ah arable, plantable land.
00:06:32
Alexis
everything I have access to yeah so I would the ah property we're on itself is about 14 acres so I probably have about 12 acres that I could actually put into production mm-hmm
00:06:34
Brett
Yeah. Well, how big is the property itself?
00:06:45
Brett
And so so just to put that in perspective, you said 3,000 square feet. ish on the old one, a a an acre is like 43,000 square feet, 42, I don't know what the exact number is.
00:06:58
Alexis
Yeah. yeah
00:07:00
Brett
And you have over 10 of those. So over four, you know, talking 3,000 400,000 square feet, ah more than that.
00:07:03
Alexis
Yes.
00:07:12
Brett
It brings up this concept that I think we sometimes gloss over and it's it's a it's the concept of scale.
00:07:21
Alexis
Mm.
00:07:22
Brett
And it's hard to pin down. And this is why sometimes seeing the place in person puts it in perspective. You know you can kind of go out and look and see the fields and holy moly, this is huge.
00:07:30
Alexis
It's
00:07:34
Alexis
wild.
00:07:34
Brett
Or when you hear people talk about ah you know acres of production that are inside a greenhouse. you know We have this much acreage under plastic, acres under plastic.
00:07:47
Alexis
It's wild.
00:07:47
Brett
And you're used to thinking, oh, a big high tunnel is, you know, 30 by 200. two hundred Well, that's not acres under plastic. That's a much smaller amount. And so I think um it's just something I've been, we we recently attended the um the local food summit and it brings together lots of different folks from different ah organizations and parts of the food system.
00:08:00
Plant People
right.
00:08:10
Brett
to talk about things. And I think just one of those ongoing challenges, tensions, points of interest is the scale of our production, the scale of our markets, the scale of our distribution, and um all the the various ah Decisions we have to make about that.
00:08:31
Brett
um So when you all think of scale, when you hear scale, ah for i'll I'll answer first. One of the things that always jumps to mind for me is when I hear someone and they're talking about their operation and they say something like, we put out 212 tomato plants this year.
00:08:50
Brett
I'm like, wow, that's a lot of tomatoes on the one hand.
00:08:52
Alexis
Yeah.
00:08:53
Brett
But if you have an exact count on the number of plants that you put out, you also didn't put out that many as far as on a scale, you know, from scale.
00:08:59
Plant People
Yeah. If you know, if you know.
00:09:02
Brett
And cause like, you know, go and ask somebody who has a big operation.
00:09:02
Alexis
Yeah.
00:09:05
Brett
How many plants did you put out? Oh, I don't know. Something like 40,000.
00:09:09
Plant People
If they talk in terms of acres, then they yeah, that's different.
00:09:10
Brett
And then he's like, oh yeah. Yeah.
00:09:12
Plant People
Yeah.
00:09:13
Alexis
Yeah. We put out five acres of tomatoes. We don't know how many plants, but.
00:09:16
Plant People
Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:16
Brett
Yeah.
00:09:17
Plant People
They, they roughly know how many plants per acre, but they don't know exactly how many. Yeah.
00:09:20
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:09:21
Brett
So what when you all think about scale, think about this this concept of whether it be scaling up is something that we use, whether it be Kentucky agriculture, um efficiency of scale.
00:09:32
Brett
I mean, what what are the things, that associations that you all have in that discussion of scale?
00:09:36
Plant People
Well... I'll go back to some of the earliest discussions I have with people that are new to an enterprise or or new to growing things. is Usually a typical early piece of advice we give as field agents is that you know we tell people to start small.
00:09:52
Plant People
That also relates to scale.
00:09:54
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:09:55
Plant People
ah you know i Start in proportion to your experiences with that crop and your you know aversion or you how much risk you're willing to take since you don't have a lot of experience with that, which all goes to say,
00:10:07
Plant People
start small and scale up slowly as you gain experience, as you gain an understanding of markets. And that's one of the first things I think about. And I guess ah the way you're framing this out, Brett, is, I mean, that that has to do with scale, doesn't it?
00:10:19
Plant People
I mean, start, you you know, we encourage people, start small. don't Don't start bigger than you're willing to lose, basically.
00:10:26
Brett
When you say small, do you have something in your – I mean, but I'm, you know, being frank or being real about it.
00:10:28
Plant People
That's relative as well.
00:10:34
Brett
Do you have something in your mind or like are there a couple of – okay.
00:10:36
Plant People
No, not really. but i mean ah you know i've I've dealt with ro crop people you know fairly recently within last three or four years. that you know They have over 1,000 acres row crop, and they're wanting to do something in horticulture, so their idea of scale is a little different than someone that has never had a market garden.
00:10:56
Plant People
Now, they both should start off smaller, But it's not an easy question to answer because one has access to 15 laborers constantly, 365 all year round, and they're looking for something to do.
00:11:14
Plant People
So they need to scale up to take advantage of labor, whereas the other person, it's just that person. So scale is a it's almost on a case by case basis.
00:11:25
Plant People
And I can't really say a quarter acres of tomatoes.
00:11:26
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:11:29
Plant People
Because that's going to be different for the one person that wouldn't even be worth them trying, even though they're new to it. So I take all these factors into account when I'm working with them. I start asking about the labor, about their management skills. Do they have different family members that, you know, do record keeping or do they have someone, a farm manager that does record keeping?
00:11:49
Plant People
You have to ask a lot of questions. And then I start to think about that in terms of scale.
00:11:54
Alexis
Sounds like, and you said it earlier, Ray, but it scale is dependent on like risk adversement.
00:12:01
Plant People
me
00:12:02
Alexis
and And I think I kind of think about scale that way too of scale and experience.
00:12:03
Plant People
Yeah.
00:12:06
Plant People
Yeah.
00:12:10
Alexis
I think in my mind, even though they're not necessarily the same always, sometimes people have no experience and they go huge. and But yeah, If scale is done correctly, your experience matches up with the like level that you're at in my brain.
00:12:27
Plant People
Yeah.
00:12:28
Alexis
I'm not saying that's right or wrong.
00:12:28
Plant People
yeah
00:12:30
Alexis
It's just well the way it is. And that would be towards markets. That would be towards you know actual growing, the whole ramification of it.
00:12:34
Plant People
yeah
00:12:38
Alexis
But the risk is... That makes sense to me. Like you put that that name on of like ah someone may have the finances and the ability to risk an acre of loss on something.
00:12:51
Plant People
Yeah.
00:12:51
Alexis
and And so that is their smallest scale versus the equivalent of that is someone with a, you know, 20 tomato plants.
00:12:53
Plant People
Yeah.
00:13:00
Plant People
Yeah.
00:13:00
Alexis
And that is small for them. And so that's a it's a good thought.
00:13:05
Plant People
And it's tough. and so And I'm trying to think about some of the earliest questions that I ask that have to do with scale. And one of the early questions is, You know, why are you doing this? I want to know if they see themselves more as a producer, because as you scale up in operations, it's not uncommon to go from a producer to a farm manager.
00:13:22
Plant People
You don't realize you're morphing.
00:13:24
Alexis
Bookkeeper and
00:13:25
Plant People
So I want to know that up front. What is going to keep them energized and motivated to keep doing what they're doing? but And I've worked with people in situations where they've slowly went from a producer and they become unhappy with the situation, not because of profit.
00:13:40
Plant People
but because their role has necessarily changed from producer to manager.
00:13:40
Alexis
and... Yeah.
00:13:45
Plant People
So I asked that question early now, you know, why are you doing this?
00:13:45
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:13:48
Plant People
And it's kind of an odd place to start until you really think about it. um So that's one of the early things I ask. And the second thing I usually ask about goes back to labor as it relates to scale as a common input.
00:13:58
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:14:01
Plant People
you know And I'm just trying to think of some of the early things I ask, but it's about what are people interested in? What do they want to be doing? And then that leads to things like discussions on labor and capital and all the economic factors back there, if that makes sense. But that that's one of the the things that i I want to know, especially if you're newer.
00:14:19
Plant People
to production, you know, that may be pretty elementary to ah ah someone that's already has a cattle operation blended in with grain and soybeans and they're used to diversifying and they have a labor pool. None of this is new to them, these concepts.
00:14:34
Plant People
But if you're new to this game altogether, then I'm more deliberate about me asking those questions and thinking through those. And I think it relates to scale as people scale up um because horticulture is interesting in and of itself.
00:14:49
Plant People
And we've had this discussion at different points on the show in one way or another, but horticulture, the total scale, let's say objective scale, like acres, ah acre and horticulture is vastly different than an acre in row crops.
00:15:03
Plant People
So, you know, all of these things tie in together
00:15:03
Alexis
Right.
00:15:06
Plant People
And I get pretty excited because when you talk about scale, there's so many ways you can go. And as an economist, I'd love to hear kind of how you think about it, Brett, ah in economic terms, ah how you structure that out in your brain.
00:15:20
Alexis
Or as a sociologist. Yeah.
00:15:21
Plant People
Yes, or both at the same time.
00:15:23
Brett
Well, you've given, yeah, you've said a lot of things, Ray, that all are setting off things in my brain. um I think one one thing is that's really interesting in as far as this being a Kentucky-based podcast is that we have in our in our cultural memory, and maybe a generation from now, it won't so much be, we have a generational or within our generational memory, an era when five to 10 acres of a particular crop could sustain a farm, ah that crop being tobacco.
00:15:34
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:15:50
Plant People
Sure.
00:15:51
Alexis
you.
00:15:53
Plant People
Yes.
00:15:53
Brett
The idea that your tobacco crop could pay for the farm for the year, you know whatever it may be.
00:15:57
Plant People
Very consistent income, very structured. Yeah.
00:16:01
Brett
And that is unique compared to other places. And so um i I don't know the um the the commodity world that well, but like I was taking a look at our our budgets um for that we have through the CCD for specialty crops.
00:16:04
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:16:17
Brett
And for ah the estimate, now these are ballpark estimates that your your mileage may vary, um but a tomato crop, one acre of tomatoes, which makes my back hurt just thinking about it as the person who would be tying them and growing them myself.
00:16:31
Alexis
Yes.
00:16:35
Brett
One acre of tomatoes we project in a typical kind of conventional growing system going to wholesale markets. Before all the expenses, gross return $24,000 off of one acre.
00:16:53
Plant People
Yeah,
00:16:54
Brett
Now, you take the labor out, you take the all the other things, the the inputs, the boxes, the etc. And you're still looking at around $3,500 per acre, ah kind of an average as far as return to land, labor, and capital.
00:17:10
Brett
I don't know what the return to land labor and capital per acre is for commodity corn, for instance, but it's not $3,500 an acre. I'll go i'll venture to say.
00:17:21
Plant People
yeah, yeah.
00:17:21
Alexis
if
00:17:22
Plant People
yeah No one's near it.
00:17:25
Brett
Do you all have a ballpark estimate? for I was trying to look it up on that.
00:17:28
Plant People
I don't write off. I used to have that rattling around my brain for all the major cry. I don't for that now.
00:17:34
Brett
Yeah, I mean, I think it's i think it's down in $200 an acre.
00:17:34
Plant People
But it, it, yeah.
00:17:34
Alexis
Hard pass.
00:17:37
Plant People
Yeah.
00:17:39
Brett
you know
00:17:39
Plant People
Yeah.
00:17:40
Brett
but'll just say that very conservatively ah And so as a result, the the thing that you have to think about there is, OK, so in order to have this much money coming back, I need to have fewer acres of tomatoes and I would need to have more acres of commodity corn. This is how I'm thinking about scale here.
00:17:57
Brett
But I also need to have a bunch of people to do all that tying and pick in and all that kind of stuff, which adds a whole layer of complexity compared to i don't have to have an H.R.
00:18:00
Alexis
Yeah.
00:18:07
Brett
department for my combine and my cedar and my drill.
00:18:09
Alexis
no
00:18:11
Brett
or and my drill and my and my ah my combine and stuff like that. And so it's it just is this very different thing. And so that has to do with how people think about scale when they you know kind of cross over from one system to another.
00:18:24
Brett
ah That an eight, you know oh, five acres, of we we deal with this a lot. Or I you know i usually, I don't have to do it as much anymore because people have seen it now, but I kind of clap back about people talking about cut flower operations.
00:18:39
Alexis
Mm-mm-mm.
00:18:40
Brett
Cause I'm like, do you have any idea the per acre returns on a cut flower operation compared to whatever you're putting it up against?
00:18:43
Plant People
Thank you.
00:18:48
Brett
Cause it's crazy. I mean, it's, but as Alexis and and others will tell you, it's extremely intensive in labor inputs. Each, each crop that you're doing has, has different care requirements.
00:19:00
Brett
The rotations are different. The, in the case of like a high tone, you have infrastructural investments and maintenance and, ah And labor, I mean, labor is a big piece of that.
00:19:10
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:19:10
Brett
And so i think, yeah, those those are the main high points I think that come up for me as I'm thinking about this. um But one of the biggest, most challenging ones is access to the labor to be able to handle the scaling up process.
00:19:27
Brett
And there's almost this kind of this leap that has to happen where where you go from not needing it to needing it to really needing it.
00:19:29
Plant People
Yeah.
00:19:34
Plant People
Yeah. That's a breaking point. Yeah.
00:19:36
Brett
And so, and just, like this is a, again, i think one of the advantages of these jobs is that we get these opportunities, ah you all on the agent side, and then now Alexis and me on the campus-based side, you get the chance to go and see some other places and other sites and other um situations. And if you haven't gone and seen them before, you would never know that this is how things work. But
00:20:04
Alexis
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:20:05
Brett
So I have been to operations um where, and you all have probably seen this too, ah you know, they're talking about thousands of acres of pumpkins, thousands of acres of watermelons.
00:20:15
Plant People
Yeah.
00:20:18
Plant People
Yes.
00:20:18
Brett
I've seen these operations where what they have done is they have bought like a literal fleet of old school buses and cut out the windows, cut out the sides, and they use them as kind of these covered wagons.
00:20:32
Brett
And they have like this building that they have built this entire, I mean, to call it a compound is a little intense, but this kind of entire compound that they have built to house their 150 plus H2A workers that they bring in every single year.
00:20:47
Alexis
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:20:49
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:20:50
Brett
And so I go and see this and I'm thinking about this. And then I come back to Kentucky and I hear people thinking about wanting to grow pumpkins or watermelons or whatever. And it's suddenly, it's just this, this, uh, cultural dissonance kind of where you, you don't really understand if you haven't seen that in per, and it's hard to even understand it, that you're going to drive for 30 minutes and you don't even make it across the farm kind of feel, uh,
00:21:13
Alexis
you
00:21:14
Plant People
I mean, these farms have office managers and you talk to, you know, a certain type of producer there that that really loves growing things. And you mentioned something like, well, you know, some of these farms have office managers and you can just look at the reaction and tell that's a completely...
00:21:31
Plant People
foreign concept, but ah absolutely when on the scale that you're talking about, Brett, which is pretty common in a lot of the U.S., you have these large, complex operations that are like many corporations um that have a lot of moving parts and they're very intricate.
00:21:37
Brett
Yep.
00:21:44
Plant People
They have marketing sides, they have production sides and all the management and personnel, almost like they have HR departments. Some of these farms do just to manage the paperwork.
00:21:51
Brett
ye
00:21:54
Plant People
But you kind of have to, and like you said, that is a um ah demarcation line that's drawn of whether or not you're willing to, you know, to have in place a labor management system.
00:22:07
Plant People
And that's going to determine how big and how far you grow in a lot of circumstances. If you're not willing to do that, or if you know yourself, and you know that's something you're not interested in then you may have to kind of reconsider some of your things. But Yeah, it's amazing how complex some of these operations are.
00:22:24
Plant People
And I've talked to greenhouse growers that have acres under glass. and And one of them just famously, and I believe you guys have met this person before, but he famously said he said, he jokingly says, I don't care about plants.
00:22:36
Plant People
He said, I'm a business manager that happens to make money off of plants.
00:22:38
Alexis
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:22:40
Plant People
And it's a very business-centric, a very logistics-centric mindset.
00:22:45
Brett
Not a true leaf.
00:22:47
Plant People
ah no that That passion, man. ah But yeah, bit ah business acumen this is there. you know
00:22:53
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:22:54
Plant People
ah Business sense is there. But it is a different kind of mindset ah that goes beyond but some of the scenarios you talked about, Brett, where we have this sort of heritage or this background in Kentucky. We have a long history, longstanding history of small farms.
00:23:11
Plant People
ah Growing a particular crop, it's been a very good crop for Kentucky, but it's also formed a lot of the mindset that I i think is still persisted in the state as far as it relates to scale and how big you have to be to do a certain thing.
00:23:20
Brett
Yeah.
00:23:25
Brett
Well, yeah, and i've I've talked with multiple folks in the extension world and elsewhere before, and um I think sometimes some people, not me, feel like we should be pushing people in that direction.
00:23:36
Brett
Like we should be, you know, encouraging people to pursue this type of scale because the, the you know, the the flip side is a fleet of school buses and multiple forklifts and, ah you know, 40,000 square foot cooled a storage area, you
00:23:37
Alexis
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:23:54
Brett
All of those comes with a lot of costs and risks associated with those costs, often financed risk in order to be able to grow into these other markets.
00:23:57
Plant People
Yes.
00:24:03
Brett
And so, you know, you you start talking about the the costs associated with doing the thing. And then the the gross returns, the amount before all of the expenses is really big. It's a big number.
00:24:15
Brett
But then you start to subtract and you're like, you know you can work really hard and take a ton of risk and clear clear as much as you could if you went up the road and and got a job at Home Depot.
00:24:19
Alexis
Still the same amount. Yeah.
00:24:25
Brett
And it's kind of like this...
00:24:26
Plant People
Yeah.
00:24:28
Brett
it's and that's i mean Unfortunately, that that's a very familiar feeling for a lot of American US farmers and and farmers globally too. Like, man, you you got to kind of love it in some cases in order to do it.
00:24:41
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:24:42
Brett
ah And even that sometimes isn't isn't quite enough. But yeah.
00:24:46
Alexis
Like my mom always said, like, the more you have, the more you have to fix.
00:24:47
Brett
Sure.
00:24:51
Alexis
And and she was always talking about like the washing machine or, you know, because like I would always want like the new tech or, you know, something like that.
00:24:51
Plant People
Well, you have to maintain. Yeah.
00:24:54
Brett
Sure.
00:24:58
Alexis
and she goes, like, the more you have, the more you're going to have to fix. and it it has resonated with me, especially in farming that that's the case. Like, yeah, it would be nice to have, you know, a Kubota or, you know, uh, a lot of these different implements, but, uh, you know, I have, I heard on a podcast, somebody said, if you struggle with it for a year and, and you realize how much easier your life would be and like, you you can't find a better way to do it, then go buy the thing or then go scale up to the next thing.
00:25:28
Plant People
Yeah.
00:25:29
Alexis
Um, but, uh, What is it? Necessity is the mother of innovation or something along those lines.
00:25:35
Plant People
Sounds like you're quoting more money, more problems.
00:25:37
Alexis
Yeah. Right. Well, yeah. and And Ray, you said something that like more liability.
00:25:39
Plant People
Or more money or or more risk, maybe we should say.
00:25:41
Brett
ah Mo' assets, mo' liabilities.
00:25:43
Plant People
oo I like that economic version.
00:25:44
Alexis
Well, in the I love that you ask people like about what their goal is.
00:25:45
Plant People
Yeah.
00:25:50
Alexis
And it's sort of like, what is the lifestyle you want to lead? And I think that if we yeah exactly, exactly.
00:25:53
Plant People
Yeah, of them and their family. I mean, you have to bring their family into it. Yeah.
00:25:58
Alexis
Exactly. Like what what is what is the lifestyle that you want? And I think if we in extension were to prioritize that lifestyle over this, then the scale comes second.
00:26:12
Alexis
Right. As to like, well, what markets do you want to get into?
00:26:13
Plant People
Yeah. Mm hmm.
00:26:15
Alexis
What whatever, you know, if they don't want to get into wholesale markets, if they don't want to be driving to these big wholesale markets at four zero in the morning or something like that. because they want to get their kids on the school bus. You know, there's there's different ways to think about it And then you can say, all right, this is a lifestyle you want to lead. This is how much you know money you think it's going to take to do that.
00:26:33
Alexis
So then let's find a scale that works for that lifestyle. And that feels like such a more natural way to think about things. And like the farm that I have am creating here, it has all based on the fact that I don't want to hire a full-time employee.
00:26:49
Alexis
Like I don't want to manage...
00:26:49
Plant People
and
00:26:51
Alexis
you know, their, you know, retir like all their benefits and going through the IRS and doing all that. I want, you know, a part time employee that's an outside contractor and my paperwork is easy.
00:27:03
Alexis
But i so I never want to get to the scale that I have to hire a full time employee or manage more than one or two people.
00:27:07
Plant People
yeah
00:27:10
Alexis
And that's what has Kept me from going from where I'm at now on to 12 acres is that I don't want to have to do that. And so that was my, you know, pinch point for scale was the people.
00:27:24
Plant People
It's a very deliberate process for you to come to that conclusion.
00:27:26
Alexis
Right.
00:27:27
Plant People
Yeah.
00:27:27
Brett
Can you, are there any ah explicit or specific limitations that you have had to accept in order for, and I know there are limitations, but there's other specific ones that come to mind when you're saying i I, if, if I were going to do that, I would have to have a full-time employee.
00:27:39
Alexis
Mm
00:27:45
Brett
And as a result, Nope. And can any of those like as examples?
00:27:48
Alexis
Yeah.
00:27:50
Alexis
Yeah, um so I could take on more. i well I mean, I could take on more in any way. one would One obvious one would be farmer's market. So the reason we don't do farmer's market is because we also do weddings, which are weekend events. And if we know anything about farmer's market, if you're not there every weekend, you don't make the connection with the people.
00:28:08
Alexis
They're less likely to buy from you, all of those things. So if I had an a you know and employee, I probably at my scale could – um I have enough ah ah flowers.
00:28:22
Alexis
I have enough stuff to supplies.
00:28:24
Brett
Supply, your supply is good.
00:28:25
Alexis
Thank you to do that. But instead, I'm trying to push that more through a wholesale route because I can't go to farmer's market. If I had, um you know, so we could do that. We could take it or we could take on, you know, more weddings. If we had more time and more people to pick, we could have a bigger CSA.
00:28:43
Alexis
It takes a lot. If I'm the only person that is able to design, right? then And also, I'm the only person who picks for most crops because they all are different and each bouquet might have 15 different ingredients and all 15 of those flowers have a different harvest window, right?
00:29:01
Alexis
um So I either have to train somebody else on how to harvest 15 different things or I'm going to do it and I'm going to design and then the farm like has to still run, right? So there's like a lot of things where we could just go bigger in any of the routes that we're in But instead, we're pushing more towards wholesale routes because I as a one person or one person and an employee can get things done. i don't have to design design things. I deliver to one spot.
00:29:29
Alexis
um So we're pushing more towards that route out of kind of necessity in that way.
00:29:35
Plant People
You mentioned the wholesale route.
00:29:35
Brett
So...
00:29:36
Plant People
That's also a ah huge breaking point in horticulture. It's almost like labor, Brett, that we talked a little bit about earlier.
00:29:39
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:29:43
Plant People
And I was a part of an amazing conversation this past week ah between ah a 40 year plus producer that is getting out of you know producing the crop that he's producing, talking to more like an eight to 10 year, a newer producer in the same crop.
00:29:56
Plant People
But I mean, the discussion was retail versus wholesale. And it was interesting. Neither one were right or wrong. They were just reasoning through their life.
00:30:05
Alexis
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:30:05
Plant People
about like the pros and cons, just like Alexa said, of going wholesale. ah The producer, the one producer that has retired out of this enterprise, this horticulture crop is saying, you know, it never was for us. We tried that and it just didn't fit our family goals, my personal objectives.
00:30:25
Plant People
We just ah decided to actually scale back and for their particular operation, every operation is different. They could stay at retail. And for the most part, stay at retail, make just as much money that if that is scaled up approximately 10 times bigger, because to get to that next point, you had to grow 10 times bigger.
00:30:45
Plant People
And this is a person that knew, had a grown the crop for years, been to a lot of national meetings, state leadership positions in this crop. And he was talking to the other producer and he says, well, think about this, you know, and the other producer, you know, had lots of experiences in other crops and had farmed, you know, wet well, well, lots of acres in this new, and was getting into this new enterprise, but it was fascinating hearing the two go back and forth reasoning.
00:31:08
Alexis
There are different points of view. Yeah.
00:31:10
Plant People
Yes. And it had to do with scale. It had to do with wholesale versus retail and all the considerations and,
00:31:15
Alexis
What their strengths and weaknesses are. Like if someone who's doing, yeah, there someone who's doing retail likes to deal with people and is okay with that and like they'd rather spend man hours dealing with people versus someone doing wholesale would rather spend man hours, you know, maybe more in the field.
00:31:18
Plant People
And that's really what it was, their personal style. Yeah, absolutely. The one, yeah. One, yes.
00:31:31
Plant People
Yeah.
00:31:34
Alexis
Yeah.
00:31:34
Plant People
I just listened to them over a time and one was had 20 plus laborers. They had access to 20 plus you know ah labor units, you know people doing labor.
00:31:44
Plant People
And they had an office manager and they had a separation of duties for marketing and production, whereas the other was more of a family-based business. Fascinating.
00:31:54
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:31:54
Plant People
And it all had to do with family objectives and scale and where you wanted to be and where you saw yourself being. Neither one was right, neither was wrong. But like you said, Alexis, it was personal management and how they built their different operations.
00:32:07
Plant People
But it was really an interesting conversation. And a lot of it went back to that retail wholesale because In Kentucky and elsewhere, once you get so big, you're going to saturate. like you know Now we're going to talk about markets. And once you get to a point you're going to saturate local markets, then you have to think about beyond that. and And wholesale is in a whole other game that relates directly to scale and all the things that go along with that. But it's exactly what you're saying, Alexis.
00:32:33
Plant People
You see yourself, you currently see yourself. as dealing with X amount of labor and that's all you want to deal with. And you, sounds like you want your hands like in the field doing some of these things.
00:32:45
Plant People
Is that, is that what energizes you?
00:32:45
Alexis
Right. Yeah. Like I don't exactly.
00:32:47
Plant People
You don't just want to manage people and that's not right or wrong.
00:32:49
Alexis
Yeah.
00:32:50
Plant People
That's just your personality.
00:32:51
Alexis
Right.
00:32:52
Plant People
What energizes you, but yeah, it's fascinating.
00:32:52
Alexis
Right.
00:32:55
Plant People
And it goes back to scale.
00:32:56
Brett
Yeah, mean, we're touching on this this price versus volume tension, which is kind of one of the things we talk about with as you're navigating and and there's
00:33:00
Plant People
Yeah.
00:33:06
Brett
you know there's not There's not just retail and then wholesale. There's things that kind of exist in between where you can get slightly...
00:33:11
Plant People
Yeah.
00:33:12
Alexis
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:33:15
Brett
can move slightly more product and you can ah take slightly less of a price there.
00:33:22
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:33:22
Brett
think so like um ah As far as the retail environment, let's put some you know specific ideas in people's heads. I'm thinking of a farmer's market, on-farm stand, um a Like if you have a on farm store of some sort, even things like CSA, those are like kind of a slight difference because you're pre-selling larger, slightly larger volumes than just somebody can come up and buy one single ah apple off your table at a farmer's market where you're going to charge like maybe the most per unit there.
00:33:54
Brett
Yeah.
00:33:55
Alexis
you What about – sorry, Brett. I i was relating of a flower thing to a vegetable thing, but like selling directly to a chef or selling directly to a florist could be considered wholesale, but you're still probably making a little bit more selling directly to them than you're selling to a true wholesaler who then sells to them.
00:34:13
Plant People
Yeah.
00:34:14
Alexis
So that's like another way I think that people – sorry, i'm I'm all excited about scale.
00:34:18
Brett
Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:34:19
Alexis
Yeah.
00:34:20
Brett
I mean, that's it and And so what you've, what you've then started to touch on is this idea of scale of distribution, because when you sell to ah like a true true wholesale distributor, what you're doing is you're saying, I would like to take advantage of the fact that you, you can get my product to hundreds of stores or thousands of stores even.
00:34:44
Brett
And I'm going to sort of pay you for that by accepting a lower price because you're doing a lot of the work of getting it to the final customer.
00:34:52
Plant People
You're doing all the marketing. I mean most of the marketing. Sometimes your product doesn't have an identity. It just goes into the stream.
00:34:59
Brett
Well, that's an interesting one. And I do want to come back. I want to come back to that concept and just be a little, a little bit of the prickly provocateur around local food and what the heck we mean.
00:35:10
Plant People
Hmm.
00:35:10
Brett
But, um but so that's the way that I kind of think about it is the, the fewer people there are between you and the customer, the more of the marketing work you are doing.
00:35:22
Plant People
Yes.
00:35:23
Alexis
Yes.
00:35:23
Brett
the more people there are between you and them, the more somebody else is doing the work. And so as you look at that product, you get a smaller and smaller share of the final customer dollar, but you're also enlisting other people to do the work for you.
00:35:40
Alexis
Right. In theory, you're doing less work.
00:35:43
Brett
In the yes, in theory, or, or you are able to reach way, way more customers with your product and sell more units.
00:35:43
Alexis
So, yeah.
00:35:51
Plant People
And you may have to, because some of let's say an operation out West with a very low population density and you're seven hours from a large population center, which is essentially customers.
00:36:02
Plant People
So all of these things then play into that. Your decision in some cases may be made by geography, regardless of how you feel about things.
00:36:08
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:36:08
Brett
Yeah.
00:36:09
Plant People
Maybe you're in a very community of 3000 people, you know, you know ah
00:36:14
Brett
yeah
00:36:15
Plant People
And you have quite a bit of production, but scale just is in the back, isn't it, Brett? Just lurking, just in all these discussions we're having.
00:36:23
Brett
And there's positive sides to the to the scale thing too.
00:36:23
Plant People
It's there. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
00:36:26
Brett
um there are There are risks and there are positives. And so i think an interesting one that i always think about, and this this will appeal to those who are ah trying to justify the purchase of another plant or another, you know, whatever, is the kind of like, what's one more?
00:36:29
Plant People
Oh, sure.
00:36:38
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:36:42
Brett
What's 10 more? What's 40 more? I mean, there there is a point where you're like, okay, I'm going to put out 30 tomato plants. Well, what would it be to put out 40?
00:36:54
Brett
Because each with each incremental step that you take in in growing you know so within a certain range, you can put out, it doesn't take that much more work to grow 10 extra plants if you're already growing 30.
00:37:05
Plant People
Yeah.
00:37:06
Brett
But it would take a considerable more to put out 400 instead 30.
00:37:12
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:37:12
Brett
And it's those intentional kind of scaling opportunities. And and um I was talking with ah actually my neighbor recently, and he was saying something in the like construction and contracting um industry, I guess other industries too.
00:37:28
Brett
They say that if your business grows by 40%, most of the system management systems you have in place will be no longer relevant. And like you're going to have to change those and shift those.
00:37:36
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:37:38
Brett
And I think that's a, I don't know if the 40% is exactly correct in all industries, but
00:37:38
Plant People
Yeah.
00:37:43
Brett
There is something to be said with that, where if like you are putting those things out, planning each individual one, each transplant by hand, 30 to 40 to even a hundred, okay, doable, doable, doable.
00:37:51
Alexis
Yeah.
00:37:55
Brett
But then you take this jump and then it's like, okay, maybe we do a ride on transplanter, or maybe we do ah some of those, make some management or labor or equipment changes um in the process.
00:38:00
Alexis
yeah
00:38:06
Brett
And as you do that, well, so if I'm going to go from 30 plants to 400 plants and I'm going to get a transplanter in order to do that, Well, now that I've invested in the transplanter, why not do a thousand plants? Because it's way faster and easier. There's this economy of scale or this this idea of like efficiency of the scale to do that.
00:38:29
Brett
But then suddenly you have to say, okay, if I put out a thousand plants, I've now gone in two years or however, from 30 plants to a thousand, where am I going to market those things? Where am I going to sell those things?
00:38:38
Alexis
Boom.
00:38:39
Plant People
Well, that came up in a conversation, it was probably a couple weeks ago, and it was apple producers, they get together in the state.
00:38:39
Alexis
Yeah.
00:38:46
Plant People
But, you know, the in in Kentucky, we're moving to high-density apple production. And one of them brought up something that was just so elementary, but so awesome. And it was just exactly what you said, Brett.
00:38:58
Plant People
You know, let's say high-density apple production, you're in some cases, 200% production based over, you know, semi-dwarf production system. Uh, that's why most of the countries went in that direction. That's why we're going in that direction in Kentucky. But one of the local Apple producers said, Hey, we market our local communities and there's, you know, three orchards within five hours.
00:39:17
Plant People
What if we and double our production? What is that going to look like? And it's exactly what you just said, Brett, but it had to do with scale and they, and everybody's adopt. A lot of people are adopting this system. It seems like it's the future. It's the way to go.
00:39:31
Plant People
But I, that made me stop. I was like, wow. That's pretty profound. That person is looking way down the road.
00:39:37
Alexis
Yeah. And there's, you know, so there's like the marketing aspect of it. Okay, now I've got to move double or more or whatever. But there's also even if you look at it from production standpoint, I was just listening to a podcast that they weren't calling it scale, but that was exactly what they were talking about was why you don't plant all of the extras.
00:39:52
Plant People
Hmm.
00:39:56
Alexis
um You know, because in any type of production, usually, you know, if you you know you need 50, plant you plant you know, say 80, depending on what the germination is. That way you make sure you have got 50 really strong, good plants, right?
00:40:09
Alexis
But why do you not plant the other 30? And because it's so tempting, right? You've already put this time and effort into growing them. Well, you know, in any of the the plant world, but, you know, in this case, it was flowers. It was the Field and Garden podcast. Shout out to Lisa.
00:40:25
Alexis
ah But if those, it takes more time to harvest those. So whether it's tomatoes or flowers or apples or whatever, it takes more time. So there's more labor hours. And also if it you might think, oh, well, I just won't cut them. I'll leave them for the pollinators, which just my favorite thing to say now. Ah, it's for the pollinators. The laundry doesn't get folded. Ah, it's for the pollinators.
00:40:45
Alexis
But That means that those plants stop producing. It also means that they're in apples or tomatoes, there can be disease that comes in that affects all of the other plants, right? So there's more to it than just, i well, I don't get to it or, um you know, I can just plan out a few more. But if you can't market those, you don't have the ability to get them to the market.
00:41:09
Alexis
it can put a lot of pressure on all your other stuff too, right? It can hurt your other things. And so I think sometimes we forget about all of that. And then it's like the the sadness, right? There's the the burnout that we start to feel, especially when it's hot, we've been doing this a while.
00:41:25
Alexis
The burnout of when you see all of those tomatoes or apples or flowers that didn't get picked and then you're gonna feel that about yourself and it just adds to that versus seeing everything cleanly picked and feeling good about yourself and man, I'm gonna sell everything I have.
00:41:40
Alexis
That is such a better feeling than having things still sitting in the cooler, even though maybe you technically made more money. I don't know. there's um It's a lot easier to get excited to go up a little bit more in scale than to see yourself fail.
00:41:56
Alexis
um And we see a lot of like beginner farmers that struggle with that and then they quit because they've they burned out.
00:41:57
Plant People
ah Skills,
00:42:01
Plant People
yeah.
00:42:04
Alexis
ah it's And and it's so it's not all just money, but.
00:42:08
Plant People
And scale's not absolute. You know, our discussions kind of, we've kind of talked about this in one way or another. As you gain experience or as you, um as high tunnels is a good example of ah where a scale is not absolute.
00:42:24
Plant People
And then producers years ago when high tunnels started getting ah popular in Kentucky, and we'rere we're the biggest high tunnel state, I think, to this very day. And ah one of the the big motivating factors was to get to market earlier with tomatoes, because then you get a price premium at that time if you're one of the earliest tomatoes. Well, producers quickly you know started thinking, well, what if everybody...
00:42:47
Plant People
has tomatoes. What's that going to do to the price? I don't think there's any definitive answer to that, or maybe there's just not enough high tunnels that it didn't universally affect the price in Kentucky on local markets, but it was good logic.
00:42:55
Alexis
Right.
00:42:58
Plant People
They, they were looking ahead and seeing, they were like, Oh, well, if everybody has high tunnels, then we're all going to have them at the same time, any which way. So it's going to have this effect on price.
00:43:07
Alexis
right
00:43:08
Plant People
So maybe, you know, so scale is not absolute either in production or marketing. I think as you gain experience as well, the situation around you changes. We don't grow in a vacuum as population needs changes, as market, as a product availability within markets change.
00:43:25
Plant People
It's like scale is sliding all the time.
00:43:27
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:43:28
Plant People
I mean, I don't know. that I may have just broken 20 economic rules by making that statement, Brad. I'm pretty sure I did, but I just have this feeling that scale is kind of fluid and the law of diminishing returns kind of plays into this.
00:43:41
Plant People
And there's a lot that plays into it, but I don't,
00:43:44
Brett
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, part of what you're what you're touching on is that um the what like some social scientists and and others for a while, a long while now, decades has been calling calling on the the ag of the middle and the idea of like these kind of mid scale systems, mid scale, like the focusing on that because for a long time, it's been sort of teeny tiny farms or get big or get out.
00:43:59
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:44:10
Brett
ah
00:44:11
Plant People
Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:12
Brett
Butts was his name, the the ag ah USDA person was kind of that was the vibe. But um I think that it's something that we we deal with all the time is people who are frustrated.
00:44:26
Brett
They kind of want to grow the business, but they don't want to grow to the scale of the 100 H2A labor compound or even and maybe they don't want to have it do work with the HTA stuff at all.
00:44:35
Plant People
yeah
00:44:40
Brett
Or maybe they Don't want to hire someone, but they also, and there's just this but in a labor intensive industry, there's just a a certain tension there that I think is always going to be there.
00:44:52
Brett
And it's hard. It's really hard to be a large retail operation or a small wholesale operation.
00:45:02
Plant People
Yeah.
00:45:03
Alexis
Yeah.
00:45:03
Brett
Like there the that and that tipping point is very difficult to manage because you're either so stretched thin and so labor intensive with your own market staffing and everything else. And you've become a personnel manager more than anything else.
00:45:18
Brett
Or you barely have enough volume for this to make sense. And you've gone from and just to put some actual numbers on it. You know, we see at farmers markets during peak season ah between 250 and 350 a pound for tomatoes, for instance. Tomatoes is this thing we're going to keep going back to.
00:45:35
Brett
The price at some of the like produce auctions, for instance, which aren't like a true wholesale market, but they kind of give a sense of that. The averages can dip down to 50 cents a pound and sometimes even down to 10 cents a pound on the low end.
00:45:50
Brett
for the same qualities that grown in the same place, ah maybe even at a little higher quality or standard of of grading and everything else.
00:45:50
Alexis
crazy
00:45:52
Plant People
Yeah.
00:45:58
Brett
And so suddenly you're trying to to negotiate that and you're used to getting 350 a pound and you may be double production, but you're still, and and you're going to take ah you know, one seventh of the price maybe compared to what you were getting.
00:46:04
Alexis
yeah mm-hmm
00:46:11
Plant People
Yeah.
00:46:12
Brett
It's just, and and ah it it can actually pencil out and make sense in the right context and the right ah situation. But it is it's daunting and there's a reason why i i want to tell people like you're right to find this frustrating because it is this is a really difficult hump to get over.
00:46:28
Alexis
yeah Yeah, the economy of scale thing, it's like to pencil all that out is overwhelming, for sure. I have tried to do it. And I think it's just kind of in some cases, just penciled out itself, like you just kind of slowly start doing it for whatever reason, like you run out of time, so you need better equipment.
00:46:44
Brett
Mm hmm.
00:46:48
Alexis
And then it pencils out in the long run, but like trying to figure out what that long run is. And if you're scaling up or buying really expensive equipment you know ah ah huge trans planner maybe you need a tractor and you know all of the theft that's not cheap and just yeah that it's a very difficult thing to pencil out
00:47:05
Plant People
the The equipment is, the the equipment's a big deal because I've worked with producers before that have necessarily had to purchase like a very expensive piece of equipment that has a depreciation scale.
00:47:18
Alexis
mm-hmm
00:47:18
Plant People
And to make that pencil out, they've actually had to scale up their entire operation to keep that piece of equipment working to the point to where it made sense to purchase it to begin with.
00:47:22
Alexis
Yeah.
00:47:29
Brett
Exactly. Yeah.
00:47:29
Plant People
And that that's a case where ah equipment will drive the scale. Sometimes labor drives the scale because you got to keep the the labor busy year round or you're not going to have a consistent, you know, access to that labor because labor will go and find someplace else to work year round.
00:47:33
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:47:45
Plant People
so So it's what's driving your scale.
00:47:46
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:47:48
Plant People
Sometimes it's your own personal preferences. Sometimes it's your land capital. Sometimes it's access to capital.
00:47:53
Alexis
Yeah.
00:47:54
Plant People
I mean, there's there's so much that drives scale beyond what we actually even want and um interesting yes yes it's right it's act and react yes
00:48:01
Brett
And in the chess match, you you move one thing and then that forces you to move another piece.
00:48:07
Alexis
yeah
00:48:07
Brett
And it's very easy for that that train to pick up steam and then suddenly you're looking, you know, and again, it it can really work, but it is ah organizationally complex. Yeah.
00:48:17
Plant People
yes
00:48:18
Brett
So i'm I'm looking at, I'm looking at our, you know, i don't, want we don't want to go on too long, but I do have one question i wanted to ask you all and get your opinion on. And I think my question is, when we hear people talk about and celebrate the local food system and local food and local agriculture, do they really mean local and small agriculture?
00:48:43
Alexis
um
00:48:44
Brett
Another way of saying it is, if this farm 50 miles down the road from me or 10 miles down the road from me is selling products mostly to Walmart and Kroger and other kind of distribution chains.
00:48:59
Brett
Am I a champion of them or am I more a champion of small local agriculture? where Where does the scale picture fit within this conception of localness?
00:49:10
Plant People
I think think you just have to ask. I've found, i mean, ah there is a little bit of consistency there because sometimes there's a romanticized view of that Hallmark orchard that has the 30 trees and the person comes back and marries the governor that has a cute Labrador retriever.
00:49:26
Alexis
They were the mayor.
00:49:26
Plant People
You know, and and and that's fine. There's a certain romanticized cultural aspect of kind of what you see as ah small, you know, farming system. But I ask that a lot, Brett, because I want to know because I mean, it's all part of the local production fabric, right?
00:49:44
Plant People
Uh, and, uh, it's the same difference to me as, uh, an ant versus a butterfly, which one's easier to market. If you find them around your home, what's going to be your perception, you know, of the, that ant, are you going to consider it, you know, as a positive or negative versus the butterfly? They're both insects, but there's a lot of decisions made there. And it's a good question.
00:50:05
Plant People
um I've seen, um, you know, like, uh, video pieces, documentary pieces that talk about corporate farming neither bad nor good, but corporate farming and but and people tend to view that different. And I'm not for sure what corporate farming is
00:50:20
Brett
I was going i was goingnna ask, like is that what does that mean?
00:50:20
Plant People
yeah yeah yeah ah the The first thing I look for is people have to be very deliberate on you know their definitions of things, just like the local food system. That's why I like that question. But I think most of the time people think about family-owned sort of businesses, even though my definition is a little broader than that. It's everything involved in production, big and small.
00:50:43
Plant People
you know That's the job that we're in in Extension. We take everything into account. But I think if you were to to place the odds, it would be probably people see in their mind's eye smaller operations i bet i bet i'm just just just betting on that um to me it's everything
00:51:03
Brett
What do you think? What do you think, Alexis?
00:51:06
Alexis
um
00:51:08
Plant People
you're gonna corner her aren't you she's like yeah essentially he's gonna corner you under yeah into a yes or no it's like tell us alexis
00:51:08
Alexis
I think of like what
00:51:10
Brett
I am. She said I'm going corner you
00:51:12
Alexis
ah
00:51:16
Alexis
ah I think of local by like actual mileage I think I tend that's just the way my brain works and so What's crazy is that you know some of these bigger operations, like we've got some big watermelon farms out in you know Western Kentucky, and they're selling to the the box stores, ah you know but they're selling to them in Canada. They're not selling to them in Kentucky.
00:51:44
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:51:44
Alexis
To me, they're local if I can purchase their things locally. Like if I can get their things close to me and they are close to me, um you know, from like a mileage standpoint.
00:51:57
Alexis
And so I guess that's the way my brain thinks is, is not necessarily the scale that they're at, but how far away that product is forming from me.
00:52:03
Plant People
Yeah.
00:52:07
Alexis
um So it doesn't matter to me. if I, if I'm getting ah a watermelon grown 10 miles down the road at Kroger, Sweet, that's awesome. Good for them for, you know, wanting that to be their scale of operation. And I'm glad that I can support them because this is the way they're choosing to sell.
00:52:27
Alexis
Um... But, you know, or if I buy the same watermelon at the farmer's market, it doesn't necessarily make a difference to me because I'm assuming that they've made the best choice for them.
00:52:38
Alexis
um If, you know, if they were forced into it because of whatever reason, that's something so something totally different. But, you know, if I'm under the assumption that they have made a choice on their scale what's that's best for them them personally, then wherever I can buy their product, quote unquote, locally,
00:52:56
Alexis
mileage wise is great in my opinion um
00:53:00
Brett
Yeah, a useful term maybe for that. for that vision or version um is that people sometimes throw out is local products for local markets. It's kind of a pithy way of expressing a little bit of what you're what you're getting at.
00:53:12
Alexis
yeah the food miles and
00:53:13
Brett
But I think one of the one of the ways that this came up or comes up is in when people start talking about ah local food supply to um institutional purchasers, restaurants, even local distributors.
00:53:32
Brett
So for instance, a local restaurant really would like to get local products, um but they're going to buy, they they work with a distributor and that could be an amazing distributor of high quality stuff.
00:53:42
Alexis
Right.
00:53:44
Brett
People sometimes talk about distributors like it's either local farm market, perfect tomato, or it's complete cardboard coming off of the you know international mega ship or I don't know where else it would be coming from.
00:53:52
Alexis
Yeah.
00:53:55
Brett
There's distributors who are distributing some really high quality stuff um at scale.
00:53:59
Alexis
Right.
00:53:59
Brett
And so anyway, But I think that that um
00:54:06
Brett
but what what ends up being the path is that I, as a local producer, in order to sell to my chef in my local area, have to in some way figure out a way to work with a distributor that supplies them, which may push me to a scale or a price point or a food safety certification that is um larger than I would otherwise have done.
00:54:17
Alexis
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:54:22
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:54:27
Alexis
You don't want to be at?
00:54:29
Brett
um And I think that there's been some producers who are really interested in doing some of that.
00:54:29
Alexis
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:54:34
Brett
I think that across the United States, there's a lot of policy interest in pushing that in that direction because it makes it a good story. ag our Our commissioner loves to talk about agriculture as our commissioner of agriculture.
00:54:47
Brett
ah Jonathan Schell loves to talk about agriculture as economic development. think it's an interesting concept. I think there's a lot of questions about definitions and other things like that that that would be really interesting to explore.
00:54:59
Brett
um But it's it definitely, selling at scale has value to political figures. It has value to those who are in the public eye or trying to maybe ah you know address some issues or generate tax revenue or something.
00:55:08
Alexis
Right.
00:55:15
Brett
Even extension folks who want to say, you know, I have a commercial quote unquote commercial producer in my county. And it's like, well, what does that mean? Did you did you not have people selling at farmers markets for 10 years?
00:55:23
Alexis
Right.
00:55:25
Brett
Are they not commercial?
00:55:27
Alexis
right
00:55:28
Brett
And so, yeah, it's it's just something I've been thinking about and what prompted me to want to talk about the scale conversation today was just like, we we just have these narratives about what the small family farm is and we want the small family farm to be sustainable economically sustainable.
00:55:46
Brett
at the same time we have these ideas of like, you know, larger production, higher, to higher, uh, you know, high tech integration sufficiencies, et cetera.
00:55:53
Alexis
Right.
00:55:55
Brett
And sometimes we just, we just sort of float around in this, uh, ideological or, or mythological space about what those things even mean and what, what is the family farm in 2025.
00:56:06
Alexis
right
00:56:07
Brett
And Ray, and ray
00:56:09
Alexis
Right. I mean, there's there's families who run operations that sell watermelons to, you know, Canada and their entire family is in on it.
00:56:20
Alexis
And they also have a bunch of labors.
00:56:20
Brett
Yeah.
00:56:21
Alexis
Does that make them not a family farm? Like, exactly.
00:56:23
Plant People
Yeah.
00:56:23
Alexis
What are the definitions of that?
00:56:24
Plant People
Everything, to everything boils down to like sociology. It depends. And it really does because in our society, I think, you know, our, um, economics hate a vacuum. And if there's a vacuum, there's dollars to be captured.
00:56:38
Plant People
Somebody will feel that either with a small operation or a large operation at some level. Um, and a lot of that's motivated by, yeah I mean, yeah, and by economics.
00:56:46
Alexis
I mean, in the flower, yeah, so sorry, Ray, I just get excited about what you're saying.
00:56:49
Plant People
No, no. I was just to say economics.
00:56:51
Alexis
was like in the flower market, we're seeing all of these small co-ops, right, that are basically becoming wholesalers and allowing small farms to basically sell at scale because they're
00:56:51
Plant People
Yeah.
00:56:56
Plant People
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:57:00
Plant People
hu
00:57:03
Alexis
congregating their things together, right?
00:57:04
Plant People
yeah
00:57:04
Alexis
We've talked to Kayla from Kentucky Flower Market, their Soaky Flower Market. um So, you know, we're seeing things like that pop up to fill in, I think, those gaps of, well, I don't want to be at the scale to sell to, you know, directly to the big distributor wholesaler, but I also need to scale up from, you know, s my small rural farmer's market kind of thing.
00:57:15
Plant People
yeah
00:57:28
Plant People
Yeah.
00:57:28
Alexis
So, there There are some things I think people are starting to be creative and I hope to see that continue. One thing I've taken away from this, which I think Ray defined more clearly, is that Scale should, in my opinion, first come with the lifestyle you want to lead and then piece together the economics and all of those other things that go into it based on, you know, what is what is going to make you sustainable in this industry and not just the economic piece, not just the it's the social aspect of what's going to keep you farming um for you personally. And then just scale equipment, scale markets, scale
00:58:10
Alexis
production based on that goal. ah That is how I would, that's how I'm personally looking at it.
00:58:16
Plant People
brett Brett just opened up a whole panacea of questions and we've brought up more questions than answers today, but a good conversation does that. It does that. i And all of these things are so relevant.
00:58:29
Plant People
and And at some point, I mean, we're really the background, the water that the fish lives in, in this conversation is scale. I mean, that that's it.
00:58:38
Alexis
We've got a lot of new farmers out there
00:58:38
Brett
i i honestly i honestly think there's a lot of this stuff that we just don't talk about enough and even admit it and like to be honest.
00:58:43
Plant People
We don't conceptualize it or just verbalize it. Yeah.
00:58:48
Brett
And i I think one of the things about that lifestyle consideration is that you may come to find that you actually can't live the lifestyle that you want to live while farming at the scale that you wish to farm at.
00:59:03
Alexis
Facts.
00:59:03
Brett
And we tiptoe around that and people won't sell say it. They'll say, well, you know, you'll see maybe around the road it'll, but, but I think that there's a real, uh, we do a disservice by not at least openly addressing it and just kind of pushing it into the,
00:59:15
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:59:17
Brett
into this world of of ideas and mythology and other things. And, um, there's a number of folks who have been working in around this world, this space and have a lot to share. Um, shout out to our, our friends at the the food connection at UK who have been doing a lot of direct, you know, work to try to, um, but back to when, when Lillian Brisbane was the director and now Ashton Potter, right.
00:59:30
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:59:37
Brett
Is the director and they have the value chain coordinators, uh, Brandy and Heather and until recently, Faye doing some cool stuff and Brian Brady doing some um ah food safety support for for this kind of scaling consideration.
00:59:54
Brett
and think we should have them on and talk to them a little bit about what the heck, you know, can we pull back, pull this back and talk about it? Real talk by people who have been doing the work on the ground.
01:00:02
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
01:00:03
Brett
um
01:00:04
Alexis
Vae would be a cool one to have back on too with her new role um as, you know, institutional buying and sustainability and...
01:00:05
Brett
Yeah.
01:00:08
Brett
Yeah.
01:00:08
Plant People
Yeah.
01:00:12
Brett
We'll see if UK Dining will let her talk. talk
01:00:16
Alexis
Aramark? I'm call it Aramark.
01:00:18
Plant People
If it's one thing we've learned today, scale demands infrastructure.
01:00:19
Alexis
Okay.
01:00:21
Plant People
And there's all of these people that are at different points of the process. And it's all, after all of these years, still incredibly interesting to me because you're working systems within systems and that scale demands that.
01:00:34
Plant People
Scale demands that ah delineation of duties and processes. So it kind of all flows together.
01:00:40
Alexis
Yeah. And I would say if you are wondering if you're ready to scale up, if you're wondering, you know, what that's going to look like and you're trying to five year plan or whatever, and whether you're beginning and a new crop or a beginning farmer or you've been farming and you're just like, I don't know where to go from here kind of thing.
01:01:01
Alexis
Of course, we always say reach out to your local extension office. You can also reach out to the Center for Crop Diversification. You know, we've got economists and horticulturists on the team. And you can also reach reach out to, you know, we've had people from KCARD on this podcast.
01:01:17
Alexis
And they help people with that, looking at their business plan, looking at these types of things and ways to go um for economy and scale. So there's just a lot of really great people. And if you know you want to scale up and you're just not sure how to make those connections to do that, you can still reach out and we can probably find someone who can point you in the right direction if it's not us ourselves.
01:01:38
Alexis
um So anyways, lots about scale. I feel like we could talk forever on it, but all of you are probably like ready to stop hearing the word scale.
01:01:46
Brett
We're trying to scale back this podcast.
01:01:46
Alexis
How many times can we hear the word? yeah Scale make this episode. ah Maybe next time we'll talk with ah an entomologist about armored scale and soft scale.
01:01:58
Alexis
And we'll just say the word even more, but this time in both form.
01:02:00
Brett
Or perhaps the KDA about inspecting scales for farmers markets.
01:02:04
Alexis
Yeah. See, look, how many ways can we go? Whole series on scales. But we thank you guys for being here with us today. we hope you keep listening. Feel free to shout us out ah in you know an email or follow us on Instagram or leave us a review. It helps other people find us that also may want to scale up. I got to get in in one more time.
01:02:25
Alexis
Anyways, thanks for being here with us today, guys. We hope you have a great one.