ten for a dollar

Driving back from Port Townsend today I saw a sign at the side of the road: Corn, 10/$1.00, U-pick. Ten cents is nothing these days, yet it is not unheard of to see the same bargain in a grocery store. How do these people make any money? I fear that they don't make money, considering the number of people getting out of farming as a viable career rather than into it. And that being the case, why not charge more? I would pay at least a quarter for an ear of corn, even if I had to pick it myself. Especially if I got to pick it myself.

I might be missing a few steps, but a lot has to happen to produce an ear of corn. Someone sells the farmer the seed. The seed has to be packaged and sold, then transported to the farmer. The farmer has to ready the soil (buy it, clear it, till it, fertilize it, etc) and plant the corn. Planting is quite a process in and of itself. The corn has to be watered, tended, and I know that something has to happen that involves removing the tassel. The corn has to sit there, on this valuable land, an awfully long time. Sometimes it has to be treated for "pests." Eventually it has to be harvested, loaded into a truck and transported to the people who transport it to the people who sell it in the store. Someone has to move it from truck to truck and put it out at the grocery store. Someone has to ring it up and put it in a bag at the grocery store. All of those people have to be paid. The store has to make a profit, as does the grocery distributor, never mind the farmer. There is paperwork that has to happen along the way--invoices, bills of lading, tax returns. Taking all of that into account, I am downright amazed that corn doesn't cost ten dollars an ear.