Building a Sustainable Business: A Guide to Developing a Business Plan for Farms and Rural Businesses

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Innovative farmers and ranchers know that alternative crops and value-added products give them an edge in the marketplace. Effective planning is crucial to the long-term profitability of any new venture. Building a Sustainable Business brings the business planning process alive to help alternative and sustainable agriculture entrepreneurs transform farm-grown inspiration into profitable enterprises. The step-by-step strategies help you develop a detailed, lender-ready business plan or map out ways to take advantage of new opportunities, such as: Organic farming Agri-tourism On-farm processing Alternative crops Direct marketing Adding value Much more than a planning document, Building a Sustainable Business follows dairy farmers Dave and Florence Minar through a major transition on their Minnesota farm. The Minars’ experiences and excerpts from their sample worksheets lend a real-life perspective, illustrating how they and five other farm families set goals, researched alternatives, determined potential markets and evaluated financing options. Blank worksheets in the book help you create and organize your own plan. Your business plan will demonstrate that you have fully researched your idea, mapped out production and marketing strategies, and that you know how to sell your product.

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Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible

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This book examines the theology and ethics of land use, especially the practices of modern industrialized agriculture, in light of critical biblical exegesis. Nine interrelated essays explore the biblical writers’ pervasive concern for the care of arable land against the background of the geography, social structures, and religious thought of ancient Israel. This approach consistently brings out neglected aspects of texts, both poetry and prose, that are central to Jewish and Christian traditions. Rather than seeking solutions from the past, Davis creates a conversation between ancient texts and contemporary agrarian writers; thus she provides a fresh perspective from which to view the destructive practices and assumptions that now dominate the global food economy. The biblical exegesis is wide-ranging and sophisticated; the language is literate and accessible to a broad audience.

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Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community (Civil Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives)

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While the American agricultural and food systems follow a decades-old path of industrialization and globalization, a counter trend has appeared toward localizing some agricultural and food production. Thomas A. Lyson, a scholar-practitioner in the field of community-based food systems, calls this rebirth of locally based agriculture and food production civic agriculture because these activities are tightly linked to a community’s social and economic development. Civic agriculture embraces innovative ways to produce, process, and distribute food, and it represents a sustainable alternative to the socially, economically, and environmentally destructive practices associated with conventional large-scale agriculture. Farmers’ markets, community gardens, and community-supported agriculture are all forms of civic agriculture.

Lyson describes how, in the course of a hundred years, a small-scale, diversified system of farming became an industrialized system of production and also how this industrialized system has gone global. He argues that farming in the United States was modernized by employing the same techniques and strategies that transformed the manufacturing sector from a system of craft production to one of mass production. Viewing agriculture as just another industrial sector led to transformations in both the production and the processing of food. As small farmers and food processors were forced to expand, merge with larger operations, or go out of business, they became increasingly disconnected from the surrounding communities. Lyson enumerates the shortcomings of the current agriculture and food systems as they relate to social, economic, and environmental sustainability. He then introduces the concept of community problem solving and offers empirical evidence and concrete examples to show that a re-localization of the food production system is underway.

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Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution

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A global movement to take back our food is growing. The future of farming is in our hands—and in our cities.

This book examines alternative food systems in cities around the globe that are shortening their food chains, growing food within their city limits, and taking their “food security” into their own hands. The author, an award-winning food journalist, sought out leaders in the urban-agriculture movement and visited cities successfully dealing with “food deserts.” What she found was not just a niche concern of activists but a global movement that cuts across the private and public spheres, economic classes, and cultures.

She describes a global movement happening from London and Paris to Vancouver and New York to establish alternatives to the monolithic globally integrated supermarket model. A cadre of forward-looking, innovative people has created growing spaces in cities: on rooftops, backyards, vacant lots, along roadways, and even in “vertical farms.” Whether it’s a community public orchard supplying the needs of local residents or an urban farm that has reclaimed a derelict inner city lot to grow and sell premium market veggies to restaurant chefs, the urban food revolution is clearly underway and working.

This book is an exciting, fascinating chronicle of a game-changing movement, a rebellion against the industrial food behemoth, and a reclaiming of communities to grow, distribute, and eat locally.

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The CSA Cookbook: No-Waste Recipes for Cooking Your Way Through a Community Supported Agriculture Box, Farmers’ Market, or Backyard Bounty

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Make the most of your CSA membership—or your garden harvest—with simple yet bold, inventive yet nourishing meals from acclaimed blogger Linda Ly.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs have connected farms to consumers and made people more in tune with where their food comes from, but still leave many stumped beyond the conventional uses for their produce. How many times has a CSA share arrived with things you’ve never seen before or not known what to do with?

The CSA Cookbook will help you cook your way through a CSA box (or farmers’ market or backyard bounty) with 105 seasonal recipes that utilize every edible part of the plant, from leaves and flowers to stems and seeds. Think of it as a nose-to-tail approach—for vegetables!

With innovative ideas for preparing the lesser-known but no-less-delicious parts of plants, tips for using the odds and ends of vegetables, and easy preservation techniques, Linda Ly helps you get from farm to table without a fuss. Chapters include tomatoes and peppers, leafy greens, peas and beans, bulbs and stems, roots and tubers, melons and gourds, and flowers and herbs. You’ll find globally-inspired, vegetable-focused recipes that turn a single plant into several meals—take squash, for instance. This year-round vegetable brings a variety of tastes and textures to the table: Sicilian Squash Shoot Soup, Squash Blossom and Roasted Poblano Tacos, Autumn Acorn Squash Stuffed with Kale, Cranberries, and Walnuts, and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds. If you grow your own food at home, you might be surprised to learn you can eat the leaves from your pepper plants, or pickle the seed pods from your radishes.

The CSA Cookbook aims to inspire curiosity in the garden and creativity in the kitchen. You’ll look at vegetables in a whole new way and think twice before you discard your kitchen “scraps”!

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