The Price of Fair Wages

How much would it cost to pay everyone on the farm a living wage?

One of Local Fair Trade Network’s primary goals is living wages for farmers and farm workers. Many new farmers have trouble figuring out what to charge for their produce, so the nuts and bolts of achieving a living wage are hard to sort out. At this year’s Upper Midwest Organic Food Conference, Greg Reynolds, the farmer behind Riverbend Farm’s luscious eggplants and sweet Russian kale, shared his perspective on the practicalities of paying, and being paid, a living wage.

“To pay $10 per hour, I would have to charge [customers] about 9% more, and to pay $12 per hour (the theoretical living wage in Minneapolis), I would have to charge about 22% more. Of course, if I am paying my farm workers $10 or $12 per hour, I would like to get paid that much too" says Reynolds. When you add in workers’ compensation and unemployment, the price tag could rise 24% at the higher wage.

Reynolds thinks it’s unlikely that people would pay 24% more for their produce. “Personally, I think food prices are really low. Subsidies screw everything up so you have this weird market where all anybody values is how cheap something is," he says. (It should be noted that Reynolds isn’t making a fortune off farming – he typically earns about $8 per hour.) A 10% increase is “probably doable."

On the retailer’s end, Seward Co-op Produce Manager Travis Lusk says, “The significance of a 10% price increase depends on the produce item." The average co-op shopper would probably be willing to spend 20 cents more for a bunch of radishes if he or she knew it meant the farmer and his employees made a better wage. Lusk thinks a bunch of specialty greens, on the other hand, probably needs to hover just under $2 to keep the average shopper willing to try rapini or mizuna.

So how close are we to a living wage for the ones who feed us? It will take a 24% price increase for Greg Reynolds and his workers to make $12 per hour, and that doesn’t include benefits. Other farmers will have different needs depending on their scale. But an extra 20 cents for radishes, or 50 cents for that silky eggplant, could make a start.