We are starting a vegie box with local organic growers… some of them are very small scale and inexperienced in selling produce. They have offered to match market prices on their produce.
Does anyone know the best way to determine what the current market prices are for produce?
I found this link to Data Fresh for Melbourne markets: http://www.freshstate.com.au/services/data-fresh/
But it is a paid subscription service which we cant afford.
This is always a tricky one! There is not (as far as we know) a public price transparency mechanism that would enable you to check this 
A lot of people end up just using online retail to check the current price (coles / woolworths; ceres for organic) and then adjust for wholesale with a standard mark-up across all. I found a ref from a few years ago: 47% mark up average wholesale to retail on all fresh food. This is of course only gives you an extremely rough guide but could be a starting point.
Then of course need to take into account that you are not really comparing apples and apples in this comparison. The wholesale price is based on bulk amounts of product, with fairness to the farmer definitely not the driver, and your small organic growers probably cannot and should not attempt to match it!
So it is important to sense check/adjust this based on a bottom-up assessment of costs / break-even. Here is a resource to help with this process:
https://www.diigo.com/item/pdf/5pes7/jcwq
and in more depth from rodale institute:
http://www.ngfn.org/resources/ngfn-database/knowledge/pricing-fact-sheet-complete.pdf
Also see this great resource from Manchester Veg People in the UK - see from page 23 re pricing. They worked with their farmers to properly calculate fair prices based on costs (see appendix for detail). They then calculated a fair service charge for the food hub based on its costs and then they made it all transparent to customers:
These resources may be interesting - some price comparison work that Monash students did for us a couple of years ago looking at food hub prices against Gippsland supermarkets:
Grow Lightly Research Note.pdf (428.1 KB)
Baw Baw Organics Research Note.pdf (388.0 KB)
South East Food Hub Research Report.pdf (2.4 MB) (SEE PAGES 10-11 for pricing audit)
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The other approach is to focus on market prices / reasonable price for the box you’re putting together, and using one of the box builder spreadsheets to massage how much you’re able to put in, how much to pay for each item etc. Is a possibility to do this in a more colloborative way working with the farmers
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I wonder if this is something that Food Connect might be able to share some expertise on. They have some info on how much of their $ goes to farmers compared to conventional channels https://www.foodconnect.com.au/why-join but, @wholesale how do you determine prices to pay to farmers?
Hi,
The key for us is having honest conversations with our growers right from the outset. They generally give us an idea of what a reasonable price is for them and we apply a formula which both ensures a decent margin for us and a fair percentage for the grower. Obviously we need to take market prices into account to ensure that we’re not way overpriced. For us it’s really important to remain transparent with our growers in regards to pricing and ultimately not to dictate prices to them as is common throughout the industry. I hope this helps you. Let us know if you need anything clarified.
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If you contact BD marketing at Epping market they may give you a price list of their produce, prices change every week. Although there is a rough amount for produce that I work on for cash flows. Growers get about 60-80% of the wholesale price depending on the demand. For instance in winter when I was the only organic grower with Silverbeet it was selling for $3 a bunch, but I was getting $2.50 a bunch as I was the only person with it. Unfortunately the price paid does not always match the cost of producing, which is why I don’t grow parsnips. I can send you some old price lists if you email me. bom_clothing@yahoo.com
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