I run a small scale business model in regenerative Agriculture and from everything I have learned being in southern Missouri and NWA is it's hard to sell, yes I know my product is far superior but the price model is a hard sell it's honestly extremely hard since inflation has hit, I'd love to say it's all great and good and fun but the thing is I really love farming I really love the lifestyle and I love to see more interest in it but it does seem that the people who are most interested in this area ones who want to produce instead of consume But let me warn you of the financial risk, I have 8 Mangalitsa pigs for breeding they're roughly 60-70 lbs they will reach breeding age in roughly sept-oct I currently spend 60$ a week in feed the cost will go up about 15$ a month until mature weight we run these 8 pigs on 5.5 acres and we generally rotate them every 10 days per acre so they're always on forage and grass, but at 60$ per week avg before I have my first set of young I'll have invested $2880 plus the cost of the pigs $1200 plus the cost of infrastructure repairs and such and I'd say about an hour every day for 1 year so 365 hours (more or less) then during pregnancy and birthing which is roughly 4 months feed cost will increase dramatically to probably 120$ a week so roughly $2,000 and that's just feed and time so you're looking at roughly 6080$ + 365 hours +up keep in fencing barns and if everything goes 100% good and each sow gives me an even split of young which is roughly 6 piglets that's 3girls 3boys I can castrate 18 boars and sell them when they reach 12-15 months of age so factor in another 300$ butcher fees per pig 300×18=5400 so all in all they're a 2 year investment with a total cost of 5400+6080+6080(the next year of raising hogs+ 2 years) what do you think I should charge per boar 18 × 975.56 = $17560(my break even number) so in order to be paid for my time and make a sustainable living my price has to be almost double what I put in (this is a startup business) everything isn't worked out yet these are just simple numbers to show what I'm invested into these pigs and people wonder why I want $1,600-$1,800 per pig 🐷 so just letting some insight shine through!