With inflation on the rise, many in the Northeast are feeling the crunch when they go to the grocery store. In part of our series of stories leading into November’s midterms, we sent WAMC Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief Aaron Shellow-Lavine out into the field to see how local food producers are taking the price shocks.
Sam Dingman: Well, now we welcome into the studio another special guest, our Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief, Mr. Aaron Shellow-Lavine, for a special report. Aaron, good to see you.
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: Oh well, it's a pleasure to be here.
Sam Dingman: You have been doing some reporting at farmers' markets. Difficult assignment.
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: Somebody has to do it.
Sam Dingman: But in all seriousness, one of the things I know you've been interested in tracking in this reporting is how the production cost of breakfast foods is rising, and there are some unexpected ways that breakfast eaters might be feeling the brunt of that.
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: So the key word they're interested in, we are certainly always in pursuit of of all of the stories that we got and intend on reporting, I counted my chickens before they hatched with this most recent visit out to the Saratoga Springs Farmers Market. It was their Wednesday afternoon, so there wasn't a breakfast sandwich vendor. Also, it is late enough in the season where there weren't any of the usual bread or egg sellers, so we struck out initially, but like any good journalist does, I got up, I brushed myself off, and I went over to the beef seller who was there. I figured if we can't get a normal breakfast sandwich, we will cobble something together.
My first stop on this redemption tour, I guess, was with Bill Morrow at the Ghost Light Farm Beef Stand. He's been going to the Saratoga Springs Stand for years. He and his family grow local beef right up in Cambridge. So again, very local. The word of this segment will be insulated. We'll get back to it. But more recently, I'll let him explain it. He's been seeing some pretty good business. Take a listen to what he had to say.
Bill Morrow: So what we are noticing is there's quite a bit of demand on beef. There's other factors. There's some news about beef, which is driving demand for small local farm beef. But yeah, as far as pricing goes, the gap is closing between us and grocery stores.
Sam Dingman: So I think Moro have a future might have a future in news. He really left us on a cliffhanger there. What is what is some news?
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: Yeah, so President Donald Trump has raised the discussion around beef a number of times in recent months. The White House is currently temporarily waiving tariffs on up to 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef, aiming to lower the consumer cost of again those beef products. That Morrow says, and he says he's in agreement with many other local beef sellers who know what they're talking about, has raised concerns for consumers about the origins of the ground beef that they're buying at grocery stores, driving them to local vendors instead. Also, just a quick note on the other thing that he said in there was, local vendors don't have a lot of the pressures that grocery store chains are. They don't have to ship their food in; they just get their cows processed, which is one of the factors that drives their costs. But gets the meat processed and takes it to the farmer's market. They don't have to import much, if anything. They're buying lots of their resources locally.
Sam Dingman: So, this this potential rise in in interest in local beef seems like it would be good for Morrow. What are the pressure points that he might be facing?
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: Right. So I mean, even when business is going great for him, there are things that continue to cost him a lot of money. He's got mineral costs. It's essentially cow vitamins. It's the things you need to raise a strong and healthy cow. And fuel costs. Again, I said you know they are fairly insulated, but they're not immune.
Bill Morrow: Everything that we pay for, the price is gonna go up. So hay is probably the number two cost, and that goes up right because the guys that are cutting the hay they're using a lot of diesel and they're driving it around and we're picking it up and all that kind of thing. So we will probably revisit our pricing, probably in the spring. We'll have to probably. I think our pricing is probably a little bit artificially low too because we don't include all of our capital expenses in the price. We're just looking at cost of goods sold. So we would very very likely have to reconsider.
Sam Dingman: So as engaging as Mr. Morrow is, who else did you speak to, Aaron?
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: So staying as true to my assignment as I possibly could, again cobbling together what you might be able to say is a breakfast, I went next to the maple syrup vendors, creating some sort of breakfast that I might have made for myself in college. You know, maybe something along the lines of a lumberjack breakfast sandwich. Glenn Hynick is the owner of Wild Hogs Sugar Shack over in Jackson, New York. Great name. It's amazing name. Amazing guy. Since 2014, the price of their pint of maple syrup has only gone up $1 today or yesterday for me. A glass pint would have cost me $18. So a little bit more than you would expect at a grocery store. But as grocery store maple syrup goes up, you might think, why don't I just go down to the farmers market? Heineck explained that, you know, their operation is, again, due to being so local, relatively insulated.
Their largest expense, typically, at least rise in expenses, comes from glass. Hynick told me that it's jumped again since 2014, probably 50%. When you're at a small-scale operation, that adds up. Apart from that, Hynick says the pests are his biggest pressure points.
Glen Hynick: Bugs in the trees, funguses in the trees. I don't know if you look around a lot of places but you'll see maple leaves that have turned brown early this year. We did not have any, but a lot of places did. It happened to us a few years ago and it makes the sugar content of the sap in the spring way less, so it's less profitable to be in the maple business when that happens.
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: And it wouldn't be a breakfast without some form of caffeine. So a couple steps away, I stopped at Vic Ikeda-Woods' Coffee Stand. It's a mobile unit, so for him, gas is a thing of consideration these days. I did bring that up with him. He told me he doesn't really like to change his prices during his sort of prime season, so he's been selling coffee. What he says is his season starting in May, so it's been a sprint and a marathon for him. He'll take a look at how everything costs, how much he thinks prices will rise or drop, and he decides on a price, and then he sticks by it. He said sometimes it has burned him, or other times yes, other times you know it works out well for him. There are there is one thing at his stand that never changes price: an Americano is always going to be $4.75. He wants to be able to offer a stable thing. On the higher end, you can get a cold brew for $6 or a latte for $5.25.
Vic Ikeda-Wood: I would say the biggest fluctuation and thing that I'm going to look at is the cost of my beans. I get my beans from crew locally here. Everything I get is all locally sourced, so I get all of my dairy from some local farms, Battenkill Farms. So, I go in and see how much is it going to cost me for a gallon of milk, how much is it going to cost me per pound of beans, and alternative milks as well are like ridiculously expensive. So, I usually will price based off of those. Everything else, for the most part, will stay the same. Like my price for a tea, my price for a lemonade, those are all going to sort of, for the most part, be pretty static for me.
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: So, because I know our listeners are very curious, and I'm a good journalist, so I like to say a splash of oat milk or almond milk will run you about 75 cents at a Keta Woods stand. Now, I was able to talk to a couple of other vendors that just didn't quite make it into this conversation. At least, we're looking to do a full wrap on it early next week. Produce vendors — folks who are selling tomatoes and lettuce and green beans and all of the other things that grow from seeds — seed prices are the thing for them that is going up. It just takes more money and resources to get the plants to a point where you can harvest seeds from them. It also takes more money to get the seeds to the local people, who then don't have a lot of other costs outside of there. There are lots of people who, you know, again, it's 1020, 30 miles down the road, and that's where their prime markets are. But other than that, you know, they are insulated from a lot of what we're seeing elsewhere. From you know what, what I think a lot of people are calling sort of price shocks.
Sam Dingman: That is WAMC Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief Aaron Shellow-Lavine checking in on some local produce prices ahead of November's midterms. Aaron, you're going to be back in a month or so to see if anything has changed.
