This essential guide leads aspiring and beginning farmers through the business aspects of starting, growing, and maintaining a successful farming enterprise, from goal-setting and thinking like an entrepreneur to selecting equipment, evaluating markets, managing financials, farming with natural systems, and dealing with the day-to-day challenges of operation.
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PRODUCT INFORMATION
Summary
This essential guide leads aspiring and beginning farmers through the business aspects of starting, growing, and maintaining a successful farming enterprise, from goal-setting and thinking like an entrepreneur to selecting equipment, evaluating markets, managing financials, farming with natural systems, and dealing with the day-to-day challenges of operation.
Description
Farming is a business, as well as a way of life. Whole Farm Management is a comprehensive guide developed by the Small Farms Program at Oregon State University to help aspiring and beginner farmers make smart business decisions to ensure lasting success. In clear, accessible language, this book covers every essential step, from developing a strategic plan to acquiring equipment, establishing infrastructure, finding markets, budgeting, managing day-to-day operations, and selecting a business structure for long-term viability. The emphasis throughout is on using sustainable agricultural systems and managing the whole farm, whether raising grass-based livestock, perennial food crops, or annual crops such as flowers. Case studies of successful farms, along with guidance and solutions to common problems from long-time farmers, round out this essential handbook.
About the Author
Garry Owen Stephenson, PhD, is the director of the Center for Small Farms & Community Food Systems, an alternative agriculture program at Oregon State University that focuses on small-scale organic/sustainable agriculture through its Extension Small Farms Program. He is the editor of Oregon Small Farm News and has 30 years experience working in an extension education and research role with farmers.
Back Cover
Build a Complete Plan for Your Small Farm Based on the acclaimed curriculum from the Center for Small Farms & Community Food Systems, this guidebook provides a complete program for starting, growing, and maintaining a farm business. Drawings on the experience and insights of 12 contributing authors and 16 farmers from across North America, it offers a holistic apporach to farm management, addressing the interconnected elements of the farm system and emphasizing sustainable, organic methods. Rural and urban enterprisers alike will learn about: - Strategic planning - Farm infrastructure, labor, and energy - Markets and marketing - Business management for the farm - Managing the whole farm ecosystem - Entrepreneurship and family business dynamics.
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