What's shocking is that buying from a farm is _more_ expensive than Whole Foods for you (or for anybody else for that matter). The price they charge wholesalers can be easily 1/10th of what you pay at a grocery store for a lot of common items, probably not beef, but vegetables for sure. To even consider the inconvenience of shopping at a farm, I'd have to see some serious cost advantages, of which there aren't any as far as I can tell.

From the farmer's perspective, it is a bit of an inconvenience to sell you anything less than a whole animal.

The fixed costs of an on-farm slaughter building or mobile slaughter truck are comparable to the facility that processes thousands of animals per hour, but spread out among fewer animals. If you want it cheaper, best be prepared buy live and do the slaughter and butchering yourself, and plan some meals around organ meats. Or there are independent butchers that will chop up any dead thing you care to bring to them, that are a necessary convenience for hunters that want to fill a chest freezer with venison every November. They can do cows and chickens, too. They aren't picky. But not all of them are able to do the slaughtering part.

Vegetable prices, I just don't get. If I am coming to your farm stand and taking the cabbage away still covered in mud and slugs, what exactly am I paying extra for? How is it that the veg farmer can't beat the grocery store price?

Negotiation power of big chains?

"Look, you don't have to bother with petty sales 1 kilo here, 2 kilos there and waste your whole day/pay somebody else to do the sales, I'll take 10 tonnes but for 30% of your normal price - look at this pile of money, it can be yours now!"

Surely the farmer must realize that the buyer is not eating all that, and will be reselling it. They are then competing with their own produce.

Also, they don't always pay someone to do sales. A lot of farm stands have honor boxes, Or they do pre-paid farm shares and just deliver to a drop-off point. There are a lot of ways for veg farmers to get paid directly for their produce, and they are all somehow less convenient and more expensive than going to a grocery store. Do they just not go to Kroger or Publix or Piggly Wiggly or wherever to see what they have to beat?

It gets worse: there are u-pick farms where you _come and pick stuff yourself_ and they still charge you more than grocery store.

Yes, but you also must account for the 3 pounds of blueberries I will eat whilst u-picking.

Seems like a sure-fire way to load up on pesticides. Those berries need to be washed first.

The meat is grass fed and pastured (stricter than free range), so it's of higher quality than whole foods. The vegetables are significantly cheaper.

It's inconvenient for the farm to sell directly to you, although I agree with you that if you buy in any kind of reasonable amount (eg a quarter / half of a cow) you should (and in my experience this has been the case) see incredible reductions in cost.