Farmers' Maket Pricing Strategies: An Informal Survey

I wrote a post last week about an article in the Seattle PI telling about a group of teenagers who did a study comparing supermarket prices in different neighborhoods. They tentatively found that products in higher income neighborhoods were more expensive than in less affluent areas, and I commented that this was much better than the alternative, which is the all too common situation of finding higher prices in lower income neighborhoods, where many people don't have the resources to go somewhere else to shop.

I received a comment from a reader who is deeply involved in the Queen Anne Farmers' Market, observing that on Queen Anne even the farmers raise their prices because they think everyone in the neighborhood can afford to pay more, and some Queen Anne residents drive to Ballard because they think the prices at that market are lower.

I was intrigued by the question of whether farmers charged different prices in different neighborhoods, so I started asking them. I said I was doing an informal, confidential survey, figuring that, as a vendor myself, they were likely to be honest with me. I spoke to folks from 8 different farms, sometimes employees, and sometimes the farmers themselves. Some were eager to talk about the issue, which appears to be something they grapple with. In general, their comments were fascinating and widely varied.

Three vendors said they never varied their prices anywhere, although they were sometimes accused by customers of charging more at a particular market, especially Bellevue. (Another said they did, in fact charge more at Bellevue.) One said they charged more at Ballard, another named Redmond, and a third said they never raised their prices, but they did lower them at the Broadway market, because people didn't seem able to pay the usual prices. Only one wouldn't tell me where they charged higher prices, but I know this person well enough to say that it was a matter of discretion, rather than sleaziness.

Nobody mentioned charging more on Queen Anne, and when I mentioned that there was a perception among customers that farmers charged more at that market, one farmer said that some other farmers did charge higher prices there, but it wasn't because of a perception that the clientele could afford it, but rather because it was a small market, so they had to charge more in order to recoup their expenses.

A number of farmers mentioned that they varied prices at different points in the season, based on whether an item was abundant or scarce, and how many other farmers were selling the same fruit or vegetable. Others said they had to charge less at markets like Ballard and the University district where there was more competition, but the volume made up for it. Another said that at the bigger, more established markets like Ballard and the University District, farmers had a chance to establish loyal clienteles, and as they got to know their customers better they were able to charge more. Note that Ballard and the U District--the two biggest markets in the city--were both named as places where one could charge more, and also as markets where it was important to keep prices low.

In general, I observed that farmers struggle with this issue and don't have easy answers. Some came around later in the day with additional thoughts. None of the folks I spoke to are getting rich doing small scale farming and selling their produce at neighborhood markets, and if they raise their prices sometimes because they think a particular market can bear it, it's not out of greed but out of an ongoing effort to make a living doing very difficult, very important work.