Browse by Topic: Planning

This service helps landowners make smart, sustainable decisions about their land through the promotion and protection of wetlands, forests, farms, endangered species habitats, and other open spaces.

Free app to track current conditions and changes in land use, slope, and soil conditions over time using GPS data. Also has a land management module to track management decisions and conditions such as rainfall, tillage, fertilizer, harvests, pests and more in a calendar-based interface.

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 is a checklist intended to help coastal Maine community members identify and adapt to flood risks.

The Pest Report is produced once every week or two during the growing season. It is a compilation of short discussions of pests and diseases either working the fields or soon to be seen. The discussions include biology of the pest organism, effects on the plant, and recommended solutions.

Country-wide weather reports and forecasts.

Weather and science driven integrated pest management. A site that links data from weather stations across the Northeast. Includes forecasts by crop or by pest. Especially useful for orchards, but there are vegetable pest models as well.

Maps and current vs historical data for the northeast, including precipitation trends, pest maps, and many more analytical resources.

NTT is a web-based, site-specific application that estimates nutrient and sediment losses for crop and pasture at the field and/or watershed scales. Agricultural producers and land managers can define a number of management scenarios for any given field or area of interest (AOI). NTT will estimate nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) losses, sediment losses, and crop yields differences between the scenarios and present results in customizable reports

NY FarmNet provides free, confidential, on-farm consulting to any farmer, farm family, or agribusiness employee in New York State. Our program operates an 800 help line where a caller can reach someone any time of day, throughout the year. NY FarmNet consultants work with farmers in teams of two, one focusing on financial issues and one focusing on family or emotional issues. Financial consultants have a background in agriculture and assist with business plans, cash flow analysis, succession planning, life after farming, developing financial records and record-keeping systems, and loan applications, to name a few. Family consultants have a master’s level degree in social work or counseling. They work with farmers to improve family and marital relations, develop strategies for better communication, manage stress and anxiety, facilitate difficult discussions, and run family business meetings so that all members have a voice.

Projects fail at a spectacular rate. One reason is that too many people are reluctant to speak up about their reservations during the all-important planning phase. By making it safe for dissenters who are knowledgeable about the undertaking and worried about its weaknesses to speak up, you can improve a project’s chances of success.

An app to determine light and shade levels and quality. Free to use with in-app purchases for advanced features.

This tool allows individuals to visualize community level impacts from coastal flooding or sea level rise. It includes data related to water depth, connectivity, flood frequency, socio-economic vulnerability, wetland loss and migration, and mapping confidence.

Making a profit growing tree fruit in the Northeast has never been easy, but could become more difficult in the coming decades as climate change progresses in the Northeast. This document is a checklist of possible climate and weather‐related challenges, and some opportunities that may increase over the next 30 years, with actions tree fruit growers can take to reduce risk or maximize opportunity.

A fact sheet on the use of soil moisture sensors on farms. Includes grower experiences, sensor types, installation, and interpretation of the readings.

Soil temperature over a specified period of time anywhere in the US.

A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) template for a farm's climate change resilience. Also includes tabs on assessing strategies, from financial to production to labor, and a resilience action plan template.

A collection of web tools for visualizing past and projected climate and hydrology in the US.

Dozens of tools for cereal crop producers to dial in production and planning, from profitability of post-plant nitrogen applications, to historical climate data, to irrigation investment calculators, and much more.

A newsletter that is weekly during the growing season with crop conditions, pest alerts, news, events, and detailed articles on everything from pest management to labor issues to post-harvest best practices.

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.

IPM pest and disease modeling and forecasting. Includes pest-specific data and other factors such as growing-degree days.

Current and historical US topographic maps available as digital files or printed to order. You can also create maps.

The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which perennial plants are most likely to thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature, displayed as 10-degree F zones and 5-degree F half zones.