The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook

Description

Contrary to popular belief, a good living can be made on an organic farm. What’s required is farming smarter, not harder.

In The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook, Richard Wiswall shares advice on how to make your vegetable production more efficient, better manage your employees and finances, and turn a profit. From his twenty-seven years of experience at Cate Farm in Vermont, Wiswall knows firsthand the joys of starting and operating an organic farm-as well as the challenges of making a living from one. Farming offers fundamental satisfaction from producing food, working outdoors, being one’s own boss, and working intimately with nature. But, unfortunately, many farmers avoid learning about the business end of farming; because of this, they often work harder than they need to, or quit farming altogether because of frustrating-and often avoidable-losses.

In this comprehensive business kit, Wiswall covers:

Step-by-step procedures to make your crop production more efficient

Advice on managing employees, farm operations, and office systems

Novel marketing strategies

What to do with your profits: business spending, investing, and planning for retirement

A companion CD offers valuable business tools, including easy-to-use spreadsheets for projecting cash flow, a payroll calculator, comprehensive crop budgets for twenty-four different crops, and tax planners.

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“Generous, unique, and comprehensive – this book will help every farmer to better set goals, reach those goals, and improve their bottom line!” –Ela Chapin, Program Director, Vermont Farm Viability Enhancement Program
“Richard’s book is a critical resource for those farmers who are trying to figure out the financial realities of their farming habits, and those who have not even started to examine farm profitability. The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook provides a step by step guide for farmers, deciphering the often regarded mystery of managing a farm as a business.”
–Enid Wonnacott, Executive Director, Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT)
“What a breath of fresh air! Richard Wiswall challenges the conventional notion that there’s no real money in farming. He argues that farmers should be well-compensated, and then he shows how to make that happen. Every farmer–organic or not, beginner or experienced–should read this book.”–Lynn Byczynski, editor and publisher of Growing for Market, a journal of news and ideas for local food producers
“How could anyone hope to produce a business guidebook useful to one of the most diverse, independent, even contrary groups of people on earth? This essential book is overdue! While the principles have been around for some time, this is the first they have been assimilated and tested so successfully.” –Ed Martsolf, Petit Jean Farm, Morrilton, Arkansas
“Richard Wiswall has given us a finely tuned handbook to run a profitable organic farm. Most farmers love the growing part but dread the business end, and suffer financially for it. This is a book that I will recommend to ANY farmer regardless of how long he or she has been in business. There are a lot of hard-learned lessons contained within that will help avoid reinventing the wheel, as so many of us have.”–Mark Wheeler, Pacific Botanicals LLC, Grants Pass, OR
“Many people become organic farmers because they love growing crops and working the land, but truth be told that’s often the easy part. Richard Wiswall’s book provides practical, real-world guidance for dealing with the hard part: the business of farming.” –Vern Grubinger, Vegetable and Berry Specialist, University of Vermont Extension
“Here is a call to ‘wake up and smell the pencil shavings!’–that a sharp pencil (and the ability to use it) is an essential tool for every farmer’s toolbox. Farmers old and new will find great practical benefit from Wiswall’s book.”–Andrew Brait, Full Belly Farm, Guinda, CA

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