#Potential Food Issues and Pricing

23 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

cedar yacht
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Tonight a concern was raised about farmers not being able to meet the crop demands for food, which could be driving up prices. As the Governor of Unica, I can't do much beyond my jurisdiction - but if this truly is an issue, I would like the Federal Government to be aware and I would like to hear from the Farmers, Butchers, Millers, and Cooks about their experiences. If you are not in these professions or government, kindly keep your thoughts to yourself so as to avoid a cluttered conversation.

Cooks - your voice is most important here. Do you feel there is an issue here? Are there crops you are struggling to get? Is there something you need to expand operation?
Butchers & Millers - do you have any stock lingering on your shelves or is it flying off?
Farmers - if crops are a bottleneck, what issues are you experiencing? Do you need fertilizers to increase yields? More hands in the field? More land?

wanton wave
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I'm a cook of FOOD store. It’s located at Unica Highway between 3 cities: Doggerland, Evergreen and West Unica. What I see from my perspective:
• Ingredients. Not many people are selling ingredients in store. So, every hour or so I took my small boat and swim to another continent to farmer and butcher stores to buy goods at best prices. I guess after completing all roads infrastructures – it will change. Not many boat users.

• My prices at some products are higher than market, some a bit lower than market. Also, I have huge sales at 20% food. For the most part selling order prices are lower than buying order prices at people stores. So, I take my small boat again and do delivery every time I have food below 60% or see much profit. And profit for the most part better in people shops. Not many people want to go food shopping, I guess.

• Some of the products are much higher than market If I need them in my further craft or they have rare ingredients to craft like sharks or roots. That way I keeping them in stock.
Regular products have prices with simple supply and demand market rule. If they are so popular, that they are sells out immediately after my boat trip – I’m rising the prices. If they are slowly going out – I’m lowering prices.

• After all this interesting, but time-consuming gameplay I can’t afford even a Steam Truck. Our tech tree is growing fast enough, so all my spends are scrolls, crafting tables, BUs and AUs, building mats to upgrade crafting places. And resupply of course.

My thoughts:
From my perspective it’s pretty balanced market. I need to invest a lot of time to make a profit, so maybe prices even low right now. But it’s ok.

mild phoenix
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Hi, I'm the primary cook of Tuub Town

How I play:

  • I have to actively fetch the ingredients for cooking (which I don't charge for)
    After harvesting time for farmers, there's plenty of ingredients in the world.

  • In my shop I calculate what I paid for add 15% for taxes and labor and charge that amount for food.
    My prices are usually the cheapest on the server but since I'm very far away, I usually have food in stock for my Town's people.

Some concerns I see:

  • Hunters don't have shops and usually instantly sell at their "personal" butcher, usually someone they know or in their town.

  • Because of the low prices in my shop and distance from other towns, sometimes people come over, and buy out my store for 1000 euro, I assume this is to spread the food at other locations ... Even tho this is fine, this will increase food prices at these locations and a shortage of food in my town.

  • Some towns "Play it dirty", the farmer would announce in their town's chat that the harvest is ready and the cook would buy 4K units of each crop. This creates an artificial shortage of ingredients on the market: the ingedients exist but are not for sale. This drives up the price of food. On top of that, the cook now has a monopoly on certain foods and charges for them as someone with a monopoly would.

  • Some foods are easier to craft than others, but give great subtotal value. Like simmered meat or bacon compared to some of the salads. So market tends to just look at the subtotal instead of ingredients used.

mortal pumice
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As a baker I have a different demand and can find most of the raw crops completely fine. I have issues sourcing bigger amounts of prime cut or sun cheese though. Those seem to be very hard to keep up with.

ripe rose
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Running a farm in Skyfall - (Taro root, Pineapples, Papaya, Cookeina Mushrooms):

  • I've felt comfortable - with an account fluctuating between 1-2k, able to make some investments like a steam tractor and a boat, afford nicer food, but still slowly working on upgrading my house off tier 1
  • Today is the first day I've seen any reasonable amount of excess on taro root and Papaya on the economy viewer to put pressure on prices.
  • Pineapples are still rare on the economy viewer
  • Today was also the first day that my stock wasn't cleared out soon after harvest and I had to transport some out of skyfall myself (I never announce my harvest just put them directly in my shop with the occasional drop off to central skyfall.)
  • Watching who buys from me a lot was off continent over the past week. Boats and food being a relatively light good it's easier to move it around early game.
  • Starting to see a lot of spoiled food enter the market, good for fertilizer, but may be an indicator that there is a significant number of cooks worldwide driving up the cost of raw materials while depressing "finshed" food prices.
  • Currently saving up to buy some more land and hire someone to clear/level it - ceiba trees are painful >.<
sinful turret
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I am a miller in Martinvast.

Currently I am struggling to keep up with demand. Especially on suncheese since sunflower seeds are completely out of stock everywhere.

I am lucky enough to be close to a high number of farmers and try my best to keep the price as low as possible for food to stay low.

Crafting time is also an issue, I wish we had industrial mills.

cedar yacht
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Hey everyone! Thank you for the information and feedback. It sounds like things are leveling off just in time for oil drilling... that puts a huge demand on food because they have such high labor requirements. If you experience any issues / changes in the supply chain, PLEASE share here! No one can help to fix an issue they're unaware of.

fallen mauve
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I'm a gatherer, miller, and baker (a kind of cook, right?). Right now the prices make no sense to me and haven't for days. My cash crop is huckleberries which sell at 0.4 euro. That doesn't make sense since it's one of the easiest crops to produce and doesn't require skill to do so.

My milled goods are not in demand at all, however, which also makes no sense. I can't sell my sugar, yeast, or other sugar products at a price that makes it worth it. Often there isn't even much volume in buy orders. Specifically, I can sell all my thousands of huckleberries and make more of a profit than ever milling them. According to my calculation, farming beets fairs little better, although, I'm not a farmer.

Thank goodness for Flaxseed Oil! It genuinely sells so well.

Flour was good but I fear demand is falling or supply has outpaced demand. As of yesterday, I'm not able to sell flour at a volume that meets the amount of cheap wheat on the market. I'm buying more cheap wheat of course and trying to sell the resulting flour but demand for flour is staying steady or maybe even dropping. Perhaps there's too much wheat on the market?

Anyway, I've taken these professions before and this is a very strange run for me. I see buy orders for crops at 0.4 euros on average. Derivative products, however, seem to be valued too low to make processing these crops worth it. I can't speak much for the cooking professions, however, as I'm not in the advanced cooking/baking professions yet.

west harness
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I'm cooking in Evergreen Gardens. I was out the last few days for vacation, so I'm still getting a sense of the current market. It seems like over the last weekish there has been a huge shortage of butchered meat. I need a ton of scrap meat and prepared meat but there has been very little for sale globally.

sinful turret
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Lack of hunter and butcher is a real issue. We have been struggling to keep up here with a single butcher who is not playing as much and the lack of hunter to gather more carcass rapidly.
I am also experimenting a slight difficulty to produce enough Oil (cooking one) in high quantity. Flour is slow to produce, and corn isn't highly available around me so making cornmeal is difficult so I don't have that much cereal germs to transform.
I still need 2 more mills, but none are on the market right now

mortal pumice
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Yes I agree, meat products are in very short supply, I made very small amounts of stuffed turkey/elk wellington so far but lower quality food is an issue too. Here's the list of what is missing for me personally:
Scrap Meat (need lots of it to make tallow)
Prime Cut (2 needed per stuffed turkey/elk wellingtion)
Prepared Meat/Raw Bacon/Raw Roast/Raw Sausage (lower amounts for various recipes)

sinful turret
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I am reaching a difficult moment in the cheese production. Oil is difficult to produce, and I am now using oil that cost lot of money, could make cheese go up to 4/5 a piece to balance out.

hybrid sequoia
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As a farmer, I’ve turned down production and stopped expanding, as I for a few days had excess crops. Had 1k sunflower seeds almost go bad, so stopped producing those also.

fallen mauve
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Suncheese as it is right now sells at about a 15% profit for a product that requires 4 quite disperse ingredients. I'd say the price of suncheese on the market right now is too low if you base it off the available ingredients and the work to collect them in bulk and in balance.

sinful turret
ripe rose
# hybrid sequoia As a farmer, I’ve turned down production and stopped expanding, as I for a few d...

I feel you there. There does seem to have been a massive shift in the raw food market the last 2 days.
Not sure if it's due to demand drying up, people less willing to transport, or abit of both.
I went from having someone buying out my shop within an hour after harvest, to shipping veggies myself to a couple big "1k volume buy" shops, to going on a world tour making a a bunch of 100 volume sales.
The world tour doesn't feel worth it as prices drop, lol

sinful turret
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I stopped using flaxseed for now, maybe it will come back but flaxseed oil doesn't sell as fast

sinful turret
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After some issues with somone buy my cheap oil just to resell to make biodiesel, oil price tripled today.

wanton ginkgo
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We are a Gatherer/Farmer/Miller company and we saw a very high demand in the Wheat chain.
We have a Truck route where we sell our stuff to the shops.
Since nobody buys stuff at our shop (even with special offers when storage is bursting)

Especially for oil, the Gasoline shops have the best margins currently which will result in a shortage for cooks.

somber zodiac
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I believe the current upset comes about with the new fuel market opening, and production chains take a bit of time to adapt and reflect on market prices. Some goods such as ethanol and vegetable oil had massive increases in demand. With millers trying to make ends meets and very slim profit margins in the food sector overall, supply will keep fluctuating for a bit, as I expect will food prices.

With the long harvest cycles, farmers always have to guess and predict what crops are needed the next day, so there is a significant time lag in any demand change manifestation. Crop spoilage is a big risk factor, so farmers such as me or @hybrid sequoia are hesitant to plant crops that we perceive as low demand. Nobody wants to sit on a 5k harvest of expensive garbage or have to panic-sell below production costs. This is a very big factor that some buyers tend to underestimate.

With millers supplying the lucrative fuel producers, I expect vegetable oil based foods soon to get expensive or scarce, but planning almost a full day ahead is difficult and risky guesswork.🤷‍♂️

Overall, there also seems quite a demand for transportation. I always see goods for sale that are wanted for an at least fair price at another place. It seems some companies have little capacity or desire to do transport, in all sectors.

sinful turret
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In our shared effort to address the food shortage, I want to express concern about some prioritizing profit over the collective goal. Personally, I use wheat for essential purposes, keeping prices low.

Though I transport goods daily, I base purchases on price and quantity, not names. If I haven't engaged with your shop, it might be due to perceived high prices or low quantity.

Considering market conditions and some playing PvP, I'm considering adjusting prices on profit-centric products to ensure affordable food for everyone. I'll focus on supplying meat and keeping raw fish prices low.

Let's work together for a sustainable food, not for personal profit.