When is a business plan, not a business plan? The answer is when selling efforts direct you to a different path. If a new farmers market opportunity opens up, a change in retail location presents itself, or you consider a farm gate expansion, your over-arching business plan may require some adaptati...

The USDA recently announced that organic farmers are eligible to enroll land utilized as conservation buffers in the Continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CCRP). Buffers include windbreaks, pollinator strips, riparian buffers, filter strips and field borders planted with native vegetation. Grass ...

Cameron Pedersen was working on a PhD, but decided it wasn’t the direction he wanted to go. “I apprenticed on an nearby organic vegetable farm,” he said. “It was good training, and I met my wife Audrey there.” In 2009, the couple started growing vegetables on a one-half acre plot on Pedersen’s paren...

“A lot of growers, particularly in the southeast, are using basic fertilizers because we don’t have much alkalinity in the water,” says Brian Whipker of North Carolina State University, explaining how this topic even came about. The floriculture research and extension specialist says that people sti...

Researchers at several universities are working hard to get “biodegradable” mulches ready for Prime Time. Dr. Carol Miles, horticulturalist at Washington State University, Mount Vernon, is working with a team of 19 university researchers at several locations, including Principal Investigator Doug Ha...

Robert Nolan’s great grandfather started farming in Middle Village, Queens, NY at the turn of the century. At that time there was plenty of fertile acreage for farming, but rapid development of the area forced a move. Several moves later, Deer Run Farms settled in Brookhaven. Nolan is the fourth gen...

LIVERPOOL, NY — In 2015, New York wine and beverage connoisseurs might have been delighted to find a bottle of vintage wine or a special growler of craft beer under their real balsam Christmas tree. It sounds like a novel gift idea, but it could become more common thanks to the efforts of New York S...

When unplanned circumstances happen, are you prepared to handle what business planners call, “the immediate?” It references the very first action, or the first action in a series of corrections, to right the situation and get your operation back on track. Owners and managers with solid business plan...

Writing down your “Standard Operating Procedures” (popularly referred to as SOPs) can be of real benefit to your business, according to Sandee Krause of Krause Berry Farm in British Columbia, Canada. Particularly if your operation is large or if it involves food preparation, having a binder with wri...