Browse by Topic: Planning

Production, business, and funding resources from the University of Vermont.

This guide introduces the principles of shiitake cultivation. It combines
insights gathered from professional growers, on-farm trial, and university-
based research all within the northeastern United States.

A comprehensive guide to business planning for farmers, pulling from all available resources, including farmers and other business experts.

This guide helps find federal programs to foster sustainable and innovative initiatives associated with agriculture and forestry. It describes program resources ranging from grants and loans to technical assistance and information resources.

Draws together a wide range of resources for farms in transition to more climate change resilient production, processing, storage and distribution practices. Includes videos, resilience planning, best practices, and resources for underserved farmers.

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.

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

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!

A concise article on the benefits of spreading your risk over more than one enterprise.

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.

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.

An online recordkeeping system for organic vegetable growers to track planting, harvests, inputs, pest management, packing, sales, and invoicing.

Programs to support humane, pasture-based farmers with grants, scholarships, webinars, mentorship, and short courses.

The Fruit & Nut Compass is a business planning tool to help new and experienced producers project financial costs and returns for a perennial crop enterprise. The tool is designed as an “open workbench” for user-entered information to assess profitability.

This fact sheet presents an overview of the most common components and options in drip irrigation systems, accompanied by estimated costs.

An annually updated guide listing Vermont-based technical and financial assistance for farms working with crops, livestock, forestry, and other land-based products.

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

Whole Farm Planning can help farmers set long-term goals, improve profitability and efficiency of farm operations, build community relationships, protect the environment, and support farm family well-being.

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

A case study on how researchers at the University of Delaware's Warrington Irrigation Research Farm are improving irrigation to boost crop yields and manage soil and water resources.

This series of articles covers key topics for launching a new agroforestry project with a guided step-by-step process to evaluate your goals, assess the opportunities on your site, and get your trees off to the best possible start.

Livestock Compass is a decision support tool that helps diversified livestock farmers analyze costs and profitability of animal enterprises, supporting data-driven decisions to improve efficiency and improve the feasibility of animal enterprises.

This is a resource directory for livestock farmers in the Berkshire-Taconic region that details processors, feed sources, livestock healthcare providers, regional transportation, cold storage, sales options, and much more!

NOFA-VT’s website offers funding resources, events, certification info, mentorship, advocacy, classifieds, and tools to connect farmers and consumers.