Pro Picks

Understanding agricultural risk in production, marketing, financial, legal, and human areas.

Outlines the new challenges that changing weather patterns pose in agriculture throughout the United States, and what you can do to make your farm more resilient. By understanding the climate risks to your production system and practices that can reduce those risks, you can identify some management steps that will improve the resilience of your farm or ranch to changing climate conditions while allowing you to achieve your other sustainability goals.

Making the connection between climate and financial risk at scale for financial institutions, companies, and governments.

A comprehensive guide to business planning for farmers, pulling from all available resources, including farmers and other business experts, that could be used to create a business planning primer—a guide that will help today’s alternative agriculture entrepreneurs work through the planning process and to begin developing their business plans.

The ReadyAG workbook is designed to help farm and ranch owners be better prepared to deal with disasters and catastrophic events that can occur on their farm or ranch.

All farms need a plan for managing energy - these 'best practice' guides help farm businesses understand the opportunities they have to implement various energy management strategies on the farm. This improves resiliency and reduces emissions for farms of any scale.

The Fruit & Nut Compass is a farm business planning tool to help both new and experienced producers project the financial costs and returns from an enterprise focused on perennial crops.The Fruit & Nut Compass is very different than a standard crop enterprise budget because it enables a person to examine the complete costs and expected returns of up to 12 crops, simultaneously, as part of an integrated farm plan over a 15 year time period. The tool is designed as an “open workbench” where the user enters information based on their specific plans to assess whether their enterprise will be profitable. It does NOT include any assumptions about crops, yields, costs or selling prices…those are all data entry tasks for the user. The main questions this tool helps the user answer are: how deep of a financial hole will I be digging and when might my perennial crop farm become profitable?

Veggie Compass is a decision support tool to help diversified vegetable farmers understand their costs of production and evaluate profitability by crop and by market channel. Veggie Compass enables farmers to make strategic decisions to adjust prices, reduce costs, shift market channel focus, reduce or drop unprofitable products, and expand production of their most profitable ventures based on their own farm data. Gathering and entering the data needed to accurately calculate the costs of production on a diversified vegetable farm that might be growing over 40 crops and selling in multiple markets is challenging. This is why so many growers rely on gut instincts and/or simplified crop budgets rather than a complete accounting. Veggie Compass is designed to help growers sort through the chaos and enable them to make data-driven decisions to enhance profitability. Growers using Veggie Compass report learning which crops on their farm are true “winners” and “losers” in terms of profitability; identifying which market channels are more profitable than others; identifying where cost savings might be made or whether yields could be enhance through better management; using the information from Veggie Compass to negotiate higher prices with wholesale buyers or to target specific crops for wholesale markets.

Livestock Compass is a decision support tool designed to help diversified livestock farmers understand their costs of production and evaluate the profitability of their various animal enterprises. Livestock Compass enables farmers to make strategic decisions to adjust prices, reduce costs, shift market channel focus, reduce or drop unprofitable enterprises and expand production of their most profitable ventures based on their own farm data.Livestock Compass organizes farm information about financial and production outcomes to give a producer a factual basis for making management decisions to improve profitability. It helps a producer identify inefficiencies in production, decide what feeds to grow on the farm and which to buy from others, decide whether to raise young stock or buy stock, accurately monitor cost of production, set prices in various marketing channels, and select the best marketing channels to pursue.

This tool helps dairy producers think through the environmental impacts and business implications when considering implementation of different climate smart practices. Also, highlights different funding avenues for listed practices!

Diversifying into forest products is a good strategy to spread out climate related risk for any farm, but it's not without it's own challenges and strategies that need to be understood. This guide is a great starting point for any farm business considering farming the woods.

When considering soil health practices for row crop farmers it's essentially to understand how each practice can alter the farm's bottom line. This decision making tool helps corn and soy producers simulate the financial impacts of adopting different soil health practices.

Every farm business needs to understand the markets they want to sell into when considering the resilience of farm enterprises. Claritas provides relatively detailed information by ZIP code, providing valuable insights to consider when evaluating farm business resilience.

A list of resources for dealing with the effects of extreme heat on workers, livestock, and crops.

Though heat exposure occurs across industries, farmworkers are more likely to die from heat-related stress. This resource examines state heat illness prevention rules that attempt to address the conditions that put farmworkers at risk.

The Heat Safety Tool helps managers plan outdoor work activities based on how hot it feels throughout the day. With a real-time heat index and hourly forecasts specific to your location, it provides occupational safety and health recommendations.

This checklist helps employers identify their job-related risk factors for heat exposure, assess their preparedness, determine where challenges exist, and develop effective ways to control their heat-related risk and make their workplaces safer.

This recording features a talk by Sara Keleman, who shares current data exploring climate trends and projected impacts on agriculture. At minute 1:10:10 Sara reviews several tools available for monitoring weather and implementing adaptive practices.

A practical guide to ecological soil management that provides background information as well as details of soil-improving practices. This book is meant to give the reader a holistic appreciation of the importance of soil health and to suggest ecologically sound practices that help to develop and maintain healthy soils.

The Cover Crop Selector tool provides a user friendly way for growers to get cover crop recommendations depending on their location, goals, and cover crop window.

The In-Field Soil Health Assessment Guide shows a wide variety of methods which can be used by farmers to explore their soil health. Focused on physical and biological indicators of soil health.

The New England Vegetable Management Guide contains a wealth of information about vegetable production including general cultural practices and crop specific recommendations. Updated with new varieties and chemical label information every two years.

This article covers the history context and development of the concept of soil health within soil science. It is part of a larger collection called "Soil and Water Conservation" which includes in-depth chapters on conservation science.

Soil Health Indicators and Tests discusses different methods of soil health assessment and provides an overview of soil biology.

The main questions this tool helps the user answer are: 1) What are the climate adaptation and/or mitigation strategies that might be most appropriate for my operation? 2) How should I make decisions about implementing these strategies? 3) How will I know if I have achieved success with a given strategy? This tool is designed as a template, or “open workbench” for the user to enter information based on their operation and goals. The tool is not a diagnostic tool and does not recommend specific solutions for a given climate related production issue. The tool can be used across any farming system and allows you to choose strategies based on your own ideas and research, reflecting the realities of your farm system, location, microclimate, local markets, or other relevant variables.

This technical bulletin contains information and resources designed to help agricultural producers, service providers, and educators in the Midwest and Northeast regions of the United States integrate climate change considerations and action-oriented decisions into existing farm and conservation plans. An Adaptation Workbook provides producers a flexible, structured process to identify and assess climate change impacts, challenges, opportunities, and farm-level adaptation tactics and continuously evaluate adaptation actions for improving responses to extreme and uncertain conditions. A synthesis of Adaptation Strategies and Approaches serves as a “menu” of potential responses organized to provide a clear rationale for making decisions by connecting planned actions to broad adaptation concepts.

This worksheet is designed to help farmers go through the 5 step climate adaptation planning process and have a word document to produce a complete plan.

A DIY whole farm planning process designed especially for small- and mid-scale diversified operations that will help you reduce the risks and capture new opportunities created by more variable weather and extremes.

A short guide to climate change, Climate Smart Farming, and potential climate adaptations along with worksheets to aid in assessment, selection, and implementation of strategies. By using this workbook, producers can expect to have a better understanding of vulnerable areas to climate change and strategies to mitigate those risks on their farm.

The Viability Program provides a range of services, from in-depth long-term business planning to short-term specialized assistance, including Business Planning, Enterprise Analysis, Financial Record-keeping and Management, Marketing and Sales, Human

An annually updated guide for Vermont farmers that includes local, state, and federal technical and financial assistance opportunities for individuals and entities working with crops, forestry products, livestock, nursery stock, and/or other land-based products.

A pool of funds to distribute directly to farmers as grants to fund projects that will improve longer-term resilience on farms.

Monthly awards recognize farmers whose businesses are contributing to a resilient Vermont agricultural landscape and demonstrate environmental stewards. Grants fund Vermont farm resilience-building projects. Three application cycles annually.

NOFA-VT’s Farmer Services Team offers flexible, responsive services to support farmers in assessing their level of climate risk and identifying adaptation strategies to increase their resilience. Submit Services Questionnaire to connect with the team

Utilizes state funding to help Vermont farms implement soil-based agronomic practices that improve soil quality, increase crop production, and reduce erosion and agricultural waste discharges.

Provides pasture management technical assistance and financial assistance to Vermont farmers to improve water quality and on-farm livestock exclusion from surface waters statewide.

The goals of this publication are to present the principles behind drip irrigation and some practical guidelines for successful and profitable use of drip irrigation.

The CSF Water Deficit Calculator estimates soil water content within a crop’s effective root zone to inform decision makers about current and forecasted water deficits. Information is used to determine the optimum frequency and duration of irrigation

A cost benefit analysis of irrigation at Intervale Community Farm in Burlington, VT, calculated using records from 2006 to 2016.

This publication addresses basic concepts related to agricultural drainage.

This publication explains how increased soil health and organic matter content help retain moisture to aid during droughty periods. It also discusses soil health management strategies to improve organic matter content.

Webinar on Reduced Tillage Systems for Organic Vegetables including cover crop management and equipement strategies.

This webinar explores the spectrum of reduced tillage practices at all scales, covering equipment and methods that can improve soil health and save labor. Speakers: Julie Fine, American Farmland Trust; Natalie Lounsbury, University of New Hampshire.

This page collects research around reduced tillage topics for vegetables, including living mulch under organic acorn squash and Brussel sprouts, tarps to terminate cover crops, sorghum sudan grass residue as mulch for tomatoes, and more....

An online toolkit is designed to help farmers from the Northeast US improve their productivity and resiliency in the face of a changing climate by using decision support tools for growing degree days, water deficits, and planting schedules.

This workshop covers regenerative systems used at Freedom Food Farm: no-till crops, livestock integration, rotational grazing, biodiversity, soil preservation, input reduction, and more! From the 2020 NOFA Summer Conference

Farmer-Led Innovations for Reduced Tillage (FLI) cultivates co-learning and innovation among organic vegetable farmers in New England. This site features the trials of a small cohort of innovative farmers trialing reduced tillage practices.