 Today I'm going to be talking about direct marketing specifically for specialty crop producers and just kind of how it can help them and or what to consider. Some examples of direct marketing are farmers markets, CSAs or community supported agriculture, online sales, UPIC operations or farm stands and farm stores. Pretty much any time the farmer is selling directly to the consumer. So a farmer's market is a great place for a specialty crop producer to get started. You have great interaction with your customers and other farmers. It's a good place to develop contacts and to even advertise other aspects, other avenues of your farm. One thing or a couple of things to consider is the time spent at the market and just how labor intensive it can be to travel to those markets, set up the hours spent there, the cleanup afterwards, all of that just needs to be taken into consideration. In Alabama the only thing needed to go to one of these is a growers permit but some farmers markets do have their own fees and permits that they require and a lot of farmers also they see that the cooperation and the competition with other farmers they're both just as important and it can be pretty profitable. There's no middleman but you just need to consider the time and the labor spent there. It's one of those tricky things like I just said it can be profitable but it's just the combination of prices, volume sold and the high time demands that contributes to how profitable that venture can be. Another avenue to go to go with direct sales are CSAs, community supported agriculture and that is just when it's when a customer they purchase a share up front of a farm's crop and as those crops come into season those customers receive a weekly box of a variety of produce grown on that farm. CSAs often involve farm visits, volunteers and potluck dinners. It's a lot of just relationships with those customers that you have bought the shares in your farm they like to think of it as their farm and every CSA is unique really there's no setup that's exactly the same farm to farm and they've just they've recently had a surge in pop popularity that's why I like to mention them and a lot of farmers like them as well because they have kind of a decreased level of risk because those customers are paying the farmers upfront the farm the farmer doesn't have to worry about if this is sold if this is going to sell they already have that baseline of what is sold and they just need to produce up to that baseline at the very least they often produce more and sell it but they know at least what they need to what they need to grow and what's already sold. Another avenue is online sales this is not quite as as popular here in Alabama but I believe it's growing in popularity it's really convenient for customers I think people are just especially after last year customers got comfortable ordering more and more online one of the drawbacks is it can seem a little less personal you don't really have that farmer to consumer contact like you have on farm sales like you have at farmers markets for csa's and there's also some additional risk liability and security people purchasing things online you need to have a pretty good secure purchasing platform online and on farm sales this kind of encompasses I'm using this to encompass upix and farm stands but any on farm sales need to consider the location you can research some of the traffic counts on roads or nearby roads but location is very important you're going to need signs I guess the less visible you are from the road the more advertising and signs you're going to need but it's still going to be helpful for you to be easily visible to people and it really it's really going to be helpful to have a scenic and attractive a clean form and there is some additional liability that comes with these on farm sales just any time you have outside people on your farm walking around you have to have that additional liability insurance and there's also building standards your required permits for any any building that you construct and you pick operations these are often thought to be very cost effective the customers are essentially your labor your harvest labor one of the drawbacks can be the hours spent and holidays just the schedule kind of like a tourist schedule whenever people want to be out that's when you need to be open and catering to them it's often tied to agritourism and there can also be there's a couple of risk associated with it your weather's not that great people people are pretty unlikely to come out there and pick fruit and the poor in rain or in a storm and also because you have outside people coming to your farm and harvesting they're often going to cherry pick the best the easiest to find produce some farmers think it's ineffective because of that but it's also possible to salvage those potential losses by regularly harvesting or blaining after them farm stands these these have been around for ages the needs of them very greatly depending on the scale of the operation some I've seen some unmanned unstaffed some have one one staff member there and I've also seen huge ones with several several employees there is there's low pressure for crop availability as compared to a grocery store or supermarket and you can just kind of you produce what you produce and that's what you have in your farm store and that's what the people have to choose from like I said before it can it can range from a self-serve stand up to a full-scale farm store and with a farm store I've seen several of these pop-up recently there are several factors that affect it depends on the traffic the location prices amount of advertising weather again people coming out and doing things shopping outside activities outside greatly depend on how good the weather is and then competition with other stores and there's a couple of other risks different from that vary from the other direct marketing channels theft is one of them you really wouldn't have to worry about that as much with other like farmers markets you have a closer eye there but with a larger store it's going to be harder to keep a handle on that and also a farm store is going to have much higher overhead and labor cost staffing costs and you may have slimmer margins because it's set up more like a store and but it can often result in higher sales if managed will okay and now I'm going to talk about a couple of things that are needed for any direct marketing venture so number one is relationships with your customers that's that can be a pro or con depending on the farmer so the producer needs to have customer oriented skills some choose these direct marketing channels because they love talking to customers they love the education aspect they love getting direct feedback from the customers some prefer to deal with customers as little as possible that that's probably going to be when they choose a wholesale marketing marketing avenue but it's key with this direct marketing that you need to have relationships with your customers consistency in your orders and communications with your customers because you're the face of the operation the one they deal with and there's a lot of perks that come with it like direct feedback so you can hear you can hear right from customers what they desire what they want next season what they like and didn't like about this year's produce and also there's risk associated with all of these avenues so farmers market farmers market and a farm stand and a u-pick operation they're all going to have varying customer turnout that's one of the perks of csa is the customers are already they've already paid up front so you really don't have to think about the amount of customers coming every day you don't have to try to attract customers um on a weekly basis and also with those three farmers market farms saying u-pick there's potential for waste but again if it's managed well it can be wildly successful and profitable with a csa you're really you're going to have a lot of labor up front recruiting those customers to purchase those shares and then you're going to have uh so a lot of that marketing is going to handle a lot of that marketing excuse me a lot of that marketing is going to handle preseason and then post harvest um during the season you're really not going to have as much labor just the harvesting the weather can also have a big impact on all of these avenues and so the time commitment is also another thing to consider when you're trying to pick um trying to decide which uh marketing channel you want to go with uh farmers market you're going to have time spent in harvest travel and sales like i just said csa you're going to have more labor up front coordination of a couple of days a week for customer pickup farm stand farm stand and you pick and those can both differ because you kind of set the hours but again the better hours you have better management the more successful you're going to be um and also just some general considerations with all of these you're going to have a greater diversity of products when you're selling directly to the customers a lot of times i mean there are farms that grow just one crop and they are uh they sell just the season of that one crop but a lot of people try to extend the season as far as i can grow a diverse amount of products but it is usually in smaller quantities than wholesale you need to think about the time consumption the time spent with each of these sales avenues and again the customer oriented skills of the producer but again i'm going to look at some of the benefits the price point selling directly to the customer you can charge that retail dollar which is really important at this point because you're putting in all this labor and time and effort you want to get that retail dollar and also the cash income at farmers markets can be pretty helpful um at a farmers market you can also advertise for other channels of your farm and there's a very low barrier to entry at farmers markets so it can be really easy to get into and you can sell your produce pretty much anywhere you want to travel and also uh the big benefits related to a csa are going to be the cash flow you're not really going to have problems with cash flow because you're getting all that money up front and then kind of sharing the risks with the customers and and then you have that upfront cash and the upfront commitment from the customers and when you're trying to choose the right marketing channel for your farm your first step is going to be to identify the channels that interest you then visit those farms markets of that type take notes and look at how well look around see what they do see how well they fit your goals look at the risk associated your lifestyle preferences do you want to be working every weekend do you want to have a certain certain hours that you want to work you need to look at the volume sold the prices they have and so some big ones are the labor required and the additional or required costs associated with that like I mentioned a farm store is going to have a lot more overhead costs and labor involved so just look into all those and see how well they fit the goals of your farm and then you can pick which marketing you can decide which marketing channel is right for your farm feel free to reach out for me reach out to me if you have any questions if you want any more information or help getting started with any of these channels thank you