As the face of America continues to evolve, sometimes it can be easy to forget those who aren’t always at the forefront of our thoughts. For example, the CDC notes that 11.1% of U.S. adults have a mobility disability with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs. Another 10.9% have a cognition ...

Imagine you’re stopping at a farm stand with the goal of buying local jelly. Which would you be more likely to purchase – a jar on a shelf against the back wall, caught in the shadows, or one on a table near the front, glistening in the sunlight? Now imagine you’ve made that jelly and in addition to...

Heat stress happens when your body has excess heat it can’t get rid of. Heat strain is how your body responds to the excess heat. And everyone is at risk when the temperatures climb. The trend in recent years has been longer, hotter summers – so how do you protect yourself and your farmworkers? Talk...

If you sell plants from a brick and mortar store but don’t offer them online, should you? In a webinar presented by AmericanHort , three horticultural professionals shared what they learned from a research project comparing e-commerce to in-store marketing. “E-commerce as a percentage of total retai...

Here’s an intriguing number for those thinking about growing herbs: Annual sales of herbal dietary supplements in the U.S. totaled $12.35 billion in 2021, according to the American Botanical Council’s 2021 Herb Market Report. But, like all other areas of horticulture, jumping right in is ill-advised...

ROANOKE, VA – The Virginia Association for Biological Farming (VABF) hosted its 23d annual conference recently. This year’s edition was one of the largest in its history, with over 500 attendees. The event spanned three days and included several networking opportunities, a trade show with over 50 ex...

“Social media puts the ‘public’ into PR and the ‘market’ into marketing,” said Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs. And while you make think of yourself as a plant person first, if you run a business, you also need to devote time to PR and marketing. Not everyone jumped on every bandwagon ...

One of the best things about NAFDMA, the International Agritourism Association , is that it’s truly a global organization. At the most recent annual conference in Austin, Texas, Heather Copley of Farmer Copleys in Pontefract, Northern England, shared her “Techniques from Across the Pond” regarding f...

Episode 49 of the Farm Commons podcast is titled “Legally sound internships on your farm.” “I’ve been at Farm Commons for a little over four years now, and over that time we’ve gotten the questions over and over again in various forms, but what the questions boil down to are: Can I have interns? And...