Farms with a Future
Creating and Growing
Sustainable Farm Business
Chelsea Green Publishing
Anyone wishing to go into farming for a career needs to read Rebecca Thistlethwaite's Farms with a Future. The author, who has an extensive background in farming and farming consultation, traveled around the US visiting family and small sustainable farms (which she features in the pages of her book) where she asked the tough questions about business plans, marketing plans, value added services and products, bookkeeping, following regulations, buying verses leasing land, food distribution, and funding.
Thistlethwaite approaches farming in the same way that an entrepreneur faces a business venture, with the same determination, thoughtful planning and risk-taking. She discusses why some farms thrive during a weaker economy and others don't which usually falls back on business-savvy. With each chapter, the author goes in depth about many approaches to finding land, building infrastructure, funding the farm, deciding where to sell the crops or animals (directly to consumers or through a chain of distributors and stores), and keeping the farm legal. She includes interviews with real successful farms with sustainable practices and dedication to environmental stewardship and each chapter has a take-away section which gives you the bullet points of each chapter.
This book would work well as an instruction manual for beginning farmers because the chapters follow a logical order starting with the plan, experimenting on leased land or on a homestead, and then tending the soil and stewarding the water supply, looking into legal and regulatory issues, building infrastructure and deciding where to sell etc... This book could also act as a reminder to veteran farmers who could glean some wise tips here from the author's extensive and exhaustive research.
The downside is that vegetarians and especially vegans are not going to feel comfortable reading this book which focuses a lot on animal farming and the slaughtering of animals--sometimes young animals not even a year old. I know I felt uncomfortable reading those sections and even skipped over some of it. But many farmers just don't think in vegetarian terms--for them life has many harsh realities and one of those is that humans eat animals. They would make the argument that their animals are raised ethically, but... The book still works well as a farm business manual and there is advice in the book that could save an aspiring farmer grief and thousands of dollars.
http://www.chelseagreen.com