> They then sell them to rich people who pay 5x for taste and the feeling of eating local.
I don't know anything about farming, but this is exactly what the first version of a true innovation usually looks like. First versions of everything, from iron weapons that bent on the battlefield, to computers that took a room, almost always were more expensive and worse than existing alternatives. These first version occupied weird niches, for example where existing alternatives were not available (as trade of tin and copper broke down after bronze age collapse) or were just toys for rich people (like first mobile phones and many, many other things).
But unlike existing alternatives, they only started their cycle of scaling and optimisations.
I don't know anything about farming, but this is exactly what the first version of a true innovation usually looks like. First versions of everything, from iron weapons that bent on the battlefield, to computers that took a room, almost always were more expensive and worse than existing alternatives. These first version occupied weird niches, for example where existing alternatives were not available (as trade of tin and copper broke down after bronze age collapse) or were just toys for rich people (like first mobile phones and many, many other things).
But unlike existing alternatives, they only started their cycle of scaling and optimisations.