Farmers of the world, unite!

[Potjeh]

You are being exploited by the metalworking bourgeois! I have seen their pitiful offerings of two or three coins for whole baskets of bread, and they aroused my anger. Why is their labour worth so much more than yours? Do they honestly believe that making a single bar of cast iron and pressing it into coins is as much work as baking 800 loaves of bread and harvesting the wheat required for them?

It takes about equal time to mine a piece of ore (with a pick, naturally) as it takes to harvest a measure of grain. A metalworker that hasn't even specialised for an industrial lifestyle can get one bar of cast iron from ten units of ore with average luck. If he makes efficient use of his smelting facility, he will also require 0.16 lumps of coal per lump of ore smelted, so production of a single cast iron bar consumes 10 lumps of ore and 1.6 lumps of coal. Making coal actually takes less time per lump than mining ore, but given that the collier also needs to replant every tree he cuts down (not that the bourgeois is so considerate), we can generously assume that it takes same effort to produce a lump of coal as it takes to mine a lump of ore. So, a bar of cast iron takes labour equivalent to harvesting 11.6 measures of grain. Let's be generous again and say it's 12 measures.

Now, given that it takes two measures of grain to make a bread, it can be said that it takes roughly the same amount of labour to make 6 loaves of bread as it take to make one bar of cast iron. At 99 coins to a bar, this means that a loaf of bread is worth as much as 16.5 cast iron coins. Let's be generous again and round it down to 16. However, as the spectre of capitalism still looms over us, we have to also take the market forces of supply and demand into account. If we give them absurdly unfair influence on prices and allow them to lower the price of bread to just one quarter of it's real price, the bread will still be worth 4 cast iron coins per loaf.

So, my farming brethren, I propose we form a united front against this shameless exploitation and set the minimum price of bread to 4 cast iron coins per loaf. Anyone who sells for less is a fool for letting himself be ripped off so badly, and will surely perish in poverty, so no action to enforce this minimum price will be needed. All that is needed is that you all become aware of how much your labour is worth.

[theTrav]

HEAR HEAR!

[sami1337]

Wait..4 cast iron coins a bread? Glad i don't farm!

Seriously a bread is worth much more. Probably 50 iron coins or so.

[Potjeh]

Not .4 coins, 4 coins. And this is a minimum price. Realistic price would be about 16 coins. Yet I see people offering two or three coins for a whole basket of bread, and the worst thing is that people fall for it.

*edit*
Actually, I just realized that I forgot to take milling and baking into account. It takes as much work to mill and bake the grain as it takes to harvest it in the first place, so this doubles the price of bread to 32 (minimum 8). I also forgot to include cost of tea in iron production, but one cup of tea per bar is an extremely generous estimate, so we can also raise the cost of iron by 1/3 of a loaf of bread (a pot of tea is roughly same work as a loaf of bread). This brings us to a final price of 28.75 cast iron coins for a loaf of bread, or the minimum price of 7 cast iron coins per loaf.


TL;DR - if you sell bread for less than 7 cast iron coins per loaf, you're being ripped off.

[Onionfighter]

What about all the bread the miner consumes while mining?

Also there is the fact that there is a scarcity of mines, while bread can be made anywhere.

[Potjeh]

I mined for experiment (four full chests), and from what I've observed the difference between food consumption while mining and harvesting/milling is negligible. As for scarcity, I already put the minimum price at 1/4th of the real price. Do you honestly believe that it should count even more, especially seeing how pretty much every village has a mine and almost all of them are willing to let you use it? And let's not forget that you can also easily get a mine of your own, by simply PM-ing one of the devs.

*edit*
Anyway, I personally refuse to sell bread at minimum price. The prices for my pastries are as follows (cic = cast iron coins):
bread 15 cic
honey bun 17 cic
apple pie 30 cic
carrot cake 40 cic
If you think that's too expensive, take your business elsewhere. Also, these prices are formed in the light of current economical conditions, so they are likely to increase (double, most likely) in the future.

[kimya]

I mined for experiment (four full chests), and from what I've observed the difference between food consumption while mining and harvesting/milling is negligible. As for scarcity, I already put the minimum price at 1/4th of the real price. Do you honestly believe that it should count even more, especially seeing how pretty much every village has a mine and almost all of them are willing to let you use it? And let's not forget that you can also easily get a mine of your own, by simply PM-ing one of the devs.

*edit*
Anyway, I personally refuse to sell bread at minimum price. The prices for my pastries are as follows (cic = cast iron coins):
bread 15 cic
honey bun 17 cic
apple pie 30 cic
carrot cake 40 cic
If you think that's too expensive, take your business elsewhere. Also, these prices are formed in the light of current economical conditions, so they are likely to increase (double, most likely) in the future.

you forgot that farmers also need tea. and have you considered the fact that you have to replant some of the seeds/whatever you harvest in the first place?

[sami1337]

Good point. 50% of the harvest work has to go back for the next time.

[niltrias]

Im not a farmer, but this seems totally reasonable to me. The only thing that bugs me about this plan is that I think that cast iron coins are a serious waste of space. Divide your prices by about 8-10, and i will pay that in wrought iron. Cast iron though? I seriously cant be bothered to lug that around.

[Potjeh]

I have taken into account the need to replant, hence why I said it takes same time to mine a lump of ore as it takes to harvest a measure of grain. If you didn't replant, you could harvest two measures of grain in the time it takes to mine one lump of ore.

As for tea, yes, it's true that farmers also need tea, but they need a lot less than miners. Miners, on the other hand, require slightly more food, so I think in the end it balances out. 28 cic per loaf is a fair price all in all, I'd say. The 7 cic price is the absolute minimum, and it's simply a price you shouldn't go below under any circumstances.

*edit to respond to niltrias*
Well yeah, these prices are just there to establish worth of items, I certainly do not demand to be paid in cic. Bars are perfectly fine. And your ratio of 8 cast to 1 wrought is the absolute maximum I'm willing to agree with, though I feel that it should be closer to 6:1.