3-22 FB Patterson $.16

  Farmers don’t get the money that everybody else gets.  I read an article the other day that said on a US dollar spent, $.16 goes to the farmer and $.84 goes to marketing. I found that unbelievable so I called up Dr. Paul Patterson from University of Idaho’s agricultural economics department. Here’s what he had to say. “Yes I remember that number from years ago, they used to use around $.20-$.25 bottom line it’s been decreasing over time. The amount of money that’s spent for food that ends up in the farmer’s pocket has been decreasing over time for a couple of reasons. One is people spend more money eating out rather than at home, and even the foods that they do buy in stores and supermarkets, is often more processed than just the raw commodity itself. So it’s a combination of things that have contributed to that as well as just the overall margins of the companies that are selling food, they’re price setters as opposed to a farmer who’s on the bottom of that whole chain is basically the price taker. So everybody after it leaves the farm has a lot better opportunity to set out a profit margin. And then things get crammed down to the producer.”