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?

"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!"

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?