[ The U-pick business model, which relies on farm visitors to do
the harvesting, has the potential to produce big profits. But its
success depends on an array of uncontrollable variables.]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE CURIOUS ECONOMICS OF PICK- YOUR-OWN FARMS  
[[link removed]]


 

Shelby Vittek
July 13, 2023
Ambrook Research
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The U-pick business model, which relies on farm visitors to do the
harvesting, has the potential to produce big profits. But its success
depends on an array of uncontrollable variables. _

U-pick farms invite to pick their own fresh cherries, berries,
peaches, and plums. , jeannetteferrary.photoshelter.com

 

Every summer, people flock to farms to pick their own fresh cherries,
berries, peaches, and plums. When autumn rolls around, they head to
orchards for apple picking and pumpkin patches in search of the
perfect porch gourd and, of course, capturing plenty of Instagrammable
content along the way.

Pick-your-own (also called U-pick) farms might be widespread and
ubiquitous now, but that hasn’t always been the case. The concept
first emerged during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when prices
for fruit and vegetable crops reached historically low levels as
war-torn countries began to recover and no longer relied on U.S.
exports. For many growers, it was cheaper to leave their crops in the
field to rot than it was to harvest them and sell them for a pittance.
That’s when a ragtag bunch of cherry growers in Wisconsin decided to
offer their fruit directly to the public for pennies a pound. The only
catch was they’d have to come out to the farm to pick the cherries
themselves. And so the bustling pick- your-own industry was born.

Today, U-pick programs often make up just one part of a farm’s
operations, a far cry from their original role as a sort of Hail Mary
— and they’re certainly more lucrative than they were in the
1930s. Pick-your-own operations now exist in every state, luring
urbanites and families out to the country to spend a wholesome
weekend. Advancements to automobiles and road infrastructure have
helped pave the path, too.

Agritourism has boomed over the last two decades, with revenue more
than tripling from 2002 to 2017. According to the USDA, agritourism
revenue grew from $704 million in 2012 to $950 million in 2017.
Pick-your-own farms have played a key role in that growth, attracting
customers to farms to pick or cut their own fruits, vegetables,
flowers, or Christmas trees out of fields — and charging them to do
so.

The U-pick business model reduces a farm’s reliance on labor for
harvesting, and eliminates the need for working with distributors,
giving farms immediate access to the profits. “Getting the fruit out
of the field is great. You’re getting cash flow coming onto the farm
earlier, so that’s helpful,” said Anu Rangarajan, director of the
Cornell Small Farm Program, and former owner of a pick-your- own
strawberry farm in Freeville, New York.

As with every corner of agriculture, however, running a U-pick
operation comes with its own unique risks. “There are lots of pros
and cons of U-pick,” said Megan Bruch Leew, a value-added
agriculture marketing specialist for the Center for Profitable
Agriculture at the University of Tennessee. “Bringing the customer
to your farm and them doing the labor of picking can be a savings to
[farmers] so they don’t have to pick all of it and transport it to
market. On the flipside of that, consumers don’t often know how to
appropriately pick and can damage plants, so there’s a loss aspect
that needs to be built in when folks are pricing product.”

While plenty of consumers embrace the opportunity to pick their own
fruit, and are happy to pay to do so, others have critiqued the idea
of being charged to do labor. But as Leew points out, there are hidden
costs associated with U-pick fruit and vegetables that more commercial
operations don’t have to factor into costs. “When you bring people
out to the farm, you need some added risk management and insurance,”
she said. “So there’s costs associated with that, as well as the
costs of providing customer comfort. People are going to need access
to a restroom, handwashing, and other things.”

And then there’s the unpredictability of weather, a factor that
farmers of all kinds deal with, but one that has the potential to wipe
out an entire crop for a U-pick farm, causing a trickle-down effect on
the farm’s overall profits. “Pick-your-own farms oftentimes have
an on-farm retail market where you can buy pre- picked fruit and
value-added products like fruits, jams, and salsas,” said Leffew.
But if there’s no pickable produce, or even if the weather is just
unpleasant, agritourists might not trek out to the farm at all,
delivering a one-two punch to the farm’s sales.

This year, fruit growers across the country have experienced
significant crop loss after erratic weather. Georgia lost more than
90% of its peach crop this year due to an abnormally warm winter.
Powerful rainstorms in California flooded hundreds of acres of
strawberry fields. And in the Northeast, orchards and vineyards
suffered damage from a late May frost that wiped out the large
majority of this year’s crops.

At Rose Hill Farm in Red Hook, New York, co-owner Holly Brittain
estimates the frost wiped out 95% of this year’s cherry crop. A
portion of the fruit grown on the farm — which includes apples,
strawberries, blueberries, peaches, cherries, plums, apricots,
nectarines, grapes, and more — goes to the U-pick side of their
business. But more importantly, the fruit is needed to fuel their
lucrative cider and winemaking operations. That’s led the farm to
not be able to offer pick-your-own strawberries or cherries to the
public this year, which means those would-be visitors might not make
it out to the farm, where they’re likely to spend additional money
in the tasting room.

“We couldn’t open those for pick-your-own, which is pretty
devastating because cherries as a unit cost do pretty well, and
that’s our first fruit of the season. Folks are excited to come back
[for cherries], and people drive from as far as Long Island and New
Jersey. So that was a big ouch for the beginning of the season,”
said Brittain, who acknowledges these unexpected and hard decisions
come with the territory of running an agritourism business.

A lack of early-season fruits hasn’t seemed to dull interest in the
farm’s other pick-your-own offerings — which will help support the
farm as it awaits support from federal disaster assistance programs to
help offset costs incurred from a devastating late- season frost. Rose
Hill recently opened its blueberry fields to U- pick, and the seasonal
flow of tourists has resumed.

However, the power of a pick-your-own business extends beyond their
ability to lure customers onto a farm. “Our culture is starving for
connections to nature. It’s one more way that people can feel
connected — connected to their food, connected to where they
live,” said Rangarajan. “U-picks do a huge service for connecting
people to our food system, and especially the seasonality of food
... and [gives farmers] the opportunity to have important
conversations with people who can support agriculture more
actively.”

  Author

Shelby Vittek

Shelby Vittek is a New York-based food and agriculture journalist. Her
work has appeared in the Washington Post, National Geographic, Bon
Appétit, Saveur, and Modern Farmer, among others.

  

* farming
[[link removed]]
* agriculture
[[link removed]]
* agritourism
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]