Browse by Topic: Planning

The toolkit lays out the common operational elements that most urban farmers must consider as they start up or grow their operations. It also contains a special section on resources for developing indoor growing operations, such as aquaponic facilities. For each element, the toolkit identifies technical and financial resources that have been developed by federal, state, and local partners. Includes info on start-up costs, key resources, land access, soil and water quality considerations, accessing capital, infrastructure, production strategies, applying for grants, market development, mentoring, and more.

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.

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

Whole-Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP) provides a risk management safety net for all commodities on the farm under one insurance policy and is available in all counties nationwide. This insurance plan is tailored for any farm with up to $17 million in insured revenue, including farms with specialty or organic commodities (both crops and livestock), or those marketing to local, regional, farm-identity preserved, specialty, or direct markets.