Running your own small farm is demanding enough, but making it profitable presents a host of further challenges. In this business-savvy guide to farming on a small scale, Sarah Aubrey covers everything from financial plans and advertising budgets to web design and food service wholesalers. Learn how to isolate your target audience and craft artisanal products that will delight and amaze customers. With a solid business strategy in place, you can confidently turn your passion into a productive and profitable venture.

The underlying economic factors that effect primary production are frequently studied and written about - soil quality, animal health, climate, machinery. This book explores the psychology of successful farm business management and decision making.

Farming is a complex job with many unique challenges, but can also be a rich and rewarding career that is full of opportunities. Following the author's Farm Business Management series, this new textbook takes the core principles and techniques and distils them into an accessible student resource. Written by an expert with decades of teaching and research experience around the world, this book also incorporates two brand new chapters on farm accounting and computer systems and software. Providing a hands-on learning experience for students of agriculture, it will continue to be a much-used resource throughout their farming career.

This book discusses the methods to determine optimal systems in farm business management. The methods are all about problem solving, as any decision situation implies choice and, therefore, requires a method for deciding which alternative maximizes the objectives. The book is not, however, about carrying out the optimal plans. Most of the chapters relate to quantitative methods and qualitative analysis. The book has a penultimate chapter discussing a number of analytical models that are commonly used in urban business but which are less important in primary production. The results of farming systems analyses can have a major impact on good decision-making in any primary producing community. Some of the methods might be used by farmers themselves, but more likely by farm advisors and consultants, and by farm management researchers interested in, firstly, providing farmers with guidance on optimal systems, and, secondly, providing governments with advice on the impact of farm policy measures.

Running your own small farm is demanding enough, but making it profitable presents a host of further challenges. In this business-savvy guide to farming on a small scale, Sarah Aubrey covers everything from financial plans and advertising budgets to web design and food service wholesalers. Learn how to isolate your target audience and craft artisanal products that will delight and amaze customers. With a solid business strategy in place, you can confidently turn your passion into a productive and profitable venture.

Transform your pastime into your livelihood. If your sweet corn is tall, your brood of chickens is beautiful, and your half-dozen goats give delicious milk, then you know firsthand the rewards of running a small farm. But what if you could turn that Do-It-Yourself hobby into a long-term source of regular income? Nurturing a healthy harvest is only half the battle--what you really need to know is how to create a successful and sustainable business. In The Farm to Market Handbook, veteran dairy-goat farmer Janet Hurst combines her deep knowledge of farming life and farmers' markets with her hard-won experience turning farm products into a living wage. From CSAs and weekly markets to school programs and local chefs, Hurst guides you through every type of market available to small farmers. She explains how you can develop a realistic marketing plan, provides a breakdown of the food laws and regulations you'll need to be aware of, and offers insider tips on how to be a successful businessperson. Through enlightening interviews with producers around the country who speak of their successes - and their failures - this book takes a look at some of the nation's top markets and analyzes why they have thrived where others have not. So if you've ever wondered how to get started selling your produce, entertained the idea of raising meat goats, or wanted to spread the word about your homegrown honey, you should read The Farm to Market Handbook and figure out how to put money in your pockets.