Who among us wore bread bags on our shoes while growing up?

[Munificence]

173. No

because there are a lot more chores that need done vs taking 1/2 hour and spending $0.70-$0.80 cents for a loaf of bread that is $1.00 at the store. One is in essence exchanging $0.25 for 1/2 hour of their time. Now you take the price control and government intervention (subsidies) out of the market and you bet I'll bake my own bread as it will easily be $5.00 a loaf at the store. At that point I could probably break even on baking it myself.

Only reason a person can beat the bread price at the store is to value their time at $.50 an hour. Bread is a 1/2 hour proposition so one is saving $0.25 or so by baking their own bread. If you want to count water used, pots, pans used, oven depreciation and really look at the true cost of producing a loaf of bread from your oven then I am sure it would be at least $1.50 per loaf. Toss in an honest "time value" for your labor of baking the bread at even min wage and that bread gets you up to $5.00 or $6.00 per loaf.

That is the way "true cost" are figured, not some la la land where folks think that the sale price is all profit. Seems some think you can bake a loaf of bread for $0.50 or there about - I'd say at the minimum they are missing actual costs and not even realizing there are other costs that they are missing, I'd say that they are missing that number by 25% easily - and that is why they should not be in business. 25% mistakes will leave you with zero profit. industry standard is to shoot for 20-30 gross and hopefully you net 5-10%. That's because most do not understand how to calculate real cost. I could sell 100 pigs for $45k and at the end of the day I might be able to stick 5-10% in my pocket to compensate me for my labor....which would be $2500-$4500 a year and in a good year if nothing goes wrong and it rains then I may be able to get lucky and clear $10K for well over 2500 hours of work which will maybe let me clear $2.50 an hour for my effort.

Then there is this farm that you do not own, but instead the bank does, along with the tractors and equipment, that right there can easily lead to a couple million in loans even before you start farming. Someone has to pay for those loans and by saving $0.25 a loaf on bread you are not gonna make much of a dent in all that financed stuff the bank owns that you reside in and use to try and make your living. Just think how much it costs for that $50K tractor out in the barn that was financed through a bank. Look at all the fuel burned planting and harvesting. Most just see a price of $4.00 a bushel for corn and think it's a lot of money and they do not see the million dollar loans that the farmer is trying to service with nearly all the proceeds from the $4.00 a bushel. And at the end of the day they are the last ones paid and it's usually not much.

We subsidize farmers because they'd simply shut down if we didn't or they'd be gobbled up by these mega corporate farmers that farm thousands of acres (Oh they are getting the bulk of the subsidies by the way). When you are worried about making the loan payments and feeding your family.


The only way to farm and have a million dollars after 5 years is to start with 2 million.