This a great pep talk from Joel Salatin on the value of creating relationships with customers. This comes from the December 2007 issue of Acres USA magazine.

...farmers should be building relationships with customers. It’s a crying shame that farmers by and large distrust their customers. Farmers are rightfully dubious about the intentions of the grain elevator, sale barn or large processor/buyer. Rather than building a customer relationship, however, farmers feel isolated from their buyers at best, and a healthy animosity at worst.

Alternative marketing offers an antidote for this buyer-seller divorce. Many relationship-oriented marketing schemes exist. From Community Supported Agriculture to farmers markets to Internet sales to farmgate sales, all of these venues and more provide opportunities for farmers to build relationships with their constituency.

The immediate feedback about product quality, product type and product quantity creates not only accountability but also immediate encouragement. How many farmers receive praise and accolades from their customers? I noticed this most poignantly when our children were small and customers would tell them what important work their family did. “We depend on you for our food,” they would say.

Do you know what that does for the self-image of a child? In a day when farm kids routinely receive redneck stereotyping from their peers — farming, after all, is not cool like Dilbert cubicles — for ours to receive constant positive reinforcement was worth more than any amount of money. We don’t farm because we’re too stupid to do anything else; we farm because we love it and want to heal the world, and all the people in it.

Honoring and respecting our customers is part and parcel of the farm business. Most farmers do not even envision themselves as part of the food chain. They just see themselves as producers of raw commodities. Period. End of story.

And that is unfortunate. It dishonors the most noble vocation on earth, and the ultimate stewardship of air, soil and water. Building customer relationships, although challenging at times, is critical to creating a farm that can sustain itself long term.

There we are: soil, plants, animals, people, community and customers. Building relationships is the calling, the sacred ministry, of good farmers. How we massage those relationships determines our success and the degree to which we heal all the elements within our sphere of influence.

Let’s go build some relationships.

You can find the full PDF here.

I especially like the idea of "immediate feedback about product quality, product type and product quantity." This farmer-to-eater relationship is probably the biggest estimator of quality. The stronger your relationship with the eater the more care you will put into the growing of food. What comprises would you make in growing food for your children versus food that goes into an airplane for a foreign country?

Polyface Farm SignWe can't all be celebrity farmers, but perhaps we can learn something? ...some quotes from an article on Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm:
A New Push to Make Farming Profitable

"He credits the high quality with enabling him to build a loyal following of consumer and restaurant customers. His e-mail-based "metropolitan buying clubs" have grown to 900 families within a 100-mile radius, from just 200 families two years ago."

"The bugaboo in direct-farm-marketing is coming in from the garden and taking care of your customers," he says. "The beauty of this is it is e-mail-based and there is no middleman."

Can we feed the world and support our small farms as local food moves from fad to mainstream? I don't think anyone knows the answer for sure, but to me it sure feels right. The question is how do we support farmers and make it economically feasible for them to bring us our organic, local, sustainable food, and (insert trendy food adjective here).