The Rural Voice, 1993-04, Page 12FARMGATES
FEEDERS
FEED WAGONS
Rugged Dependable
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2 models • 1" square tubing
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7' x 8' Single Bale Feeder
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Larger sizes available
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Econo Model Feed Wagon
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Owen Martin
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8 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Who can't afford what?
It was when I read about designer
eggs that it hit me: if consumers must
have cheaper prices for all those farm
products covered by supply
management, how come they can
find lots of
money to spend
on whatever the
latest whim is?
Designer
eggs, in case you
haven't heard,
come from hens
fed a diet high in
flaxseed. The
yolk has the
same amount of
cholesterol but
also has a high
level of the
"good" kind of
fatty acids called
Omega-3. Even vegetable oils
apparently don't have this good
Omega-3 acid. Currently you can get
it mostly through eating fish.
Anyway, the thing that grabbed
my auention was the eggs sell in
Edmonton for $2.19 a dozen,
compared to a top price of $1.65 for
regular eggs, yet they were selling
2000 dozen eggs a week through
Edmonton stores. Are these the same
consumers who are demanding an
end to marketing boards because they
drive up the cost of food?
I've got nothing against designer
eggs. If they're more healthy then by
all means let's produce them. If they
can get someone to pay a 33 per cent
premium for a designer label, more
power to them.
But I got to thinking, isn't that
what all our efforts at niche
marketing are about today? We're
trying to convince people to pay
more for food than the price they
complain about for normal food at
the supermarket each week. People
who will walk away from a roast of
beef because of the high cost, will
gladly pay several times as much for
venison, elk or buffalo. People who
think pork is too much at the meat
counter will fork out a bundle for
wild boar. People who think chicken
is too expensive will order pheasant
at a restaurant for a tab for two
people that would put groceries on
the table for a week. For the vast
majority of consumers ability to pay
really hasn't anything to do with the
price of food, it's the state of their
mind that's important.
Now many in the farming
business are saying that the consumer
is right and farmers must find ways to
be more "efficient" in producing eggs
and milk, chicken and turkey. Supply
management must go, even if it
means huge dairy herds that endanger
the environment and the local social
structure — even if it means
Canadian egg and poultry production
goes the way of the serfdom called
contract growing under the vertical
integration seen in the U.S.
A few farmers who understand the
importance of marketing are finding
those niches, finding the ways of
convincing consumers what they
produce is worth more than they'd
ordinarily be willing to pay. They
have learned the lesson of
McDonald's and all those other high-
profile chains — it isn't what is really
true that counts but what the
customer thinks is true. Many, maybe
most, of us can create a better
hamburger than McDonald's. What
we can't do is market it, convince
people that our hamburger is the only
one they should eat, even if there are
23 other fast food outlets side by side
by side on the same suburban street.
In the 1990s, it's not production but
the brainpower of marketing that
counts.
So more power to the creators of
designer eggs if it means that by
feeding flaxseed instead of corn or
wheat they can get 33 per cent more.
Let's have designer pork and
designer beef and designer oatmeal
and designer cornmeal.
Let's make our marketing boards
really marketing boards, not just
agencies to collect the product from
farmers and collect money from the
processors, but idea factories to find
ways of convincing consumers they
really should pay a price that farmers
can make a living from. It means a lot
more than increased efficiency.°
Keith Roulston is editor and publisher
of The Rural Voice as well as being a
playwright. He lives near Blyth, Ont.
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