Building and sustaining food and farm businesses that support profit, planet, and people is no small task. It requires vision, sound financial infrastructure, and a profitable business model. You need a remarkable amount of technical know-how, adaptable management, a great team, human resources, a marketing plan, knowing how to interpret a cash flow statement, approximately 10,000 cups of coffee, a little elbow grease, and a prayer. To name a few…
But you don’t have to figure this all out on your own. Check out below a library of useful resources on building and managing a profitable mission-driven food or farm business.
Featured Resources
| Title | Author | Summary | Year | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Problem Trees & Objective Trees | Wallace Center | A problem tree can be a useful tool that allows you to analyze a problem and determine its causes and effects. This resource includes a problem tree, along with resources on problem tree overviews and how to use it. | 2023 | Management |
| Marketing Your Food Safety Certification | MI Food and Farming Systems and Fresh Systems, LCC | Food safety certification is no easy undertaking. While there are many reasons to go the certification route, a central reason is market access. Whether you already have a buyer asking for it, hope to gain a new buyer through it, or just want to get ahead of the curve, food safety certification is a useful tool in moving your produce from farm to table. There is a lot more to using this tool than just passing an audit. Once your certification is in hand, how do you communicate it to existing or potential buyers? What types of buyers ask for it? While many guides reference food safety certification, they typically only describe how to get certified, not what happens after. This guide aims to show you how your certification can be a catalyst for … | 2021 | Business Operations, Food Safety and Quality |
| Running a Food Hub Volume 4: Learning from Food Hub Closures | USDA Rural Development | The goal of this study is to examine factors that have led food hubs to close their doors. Many studies have been conducted on successful food hubs, but USDA hopes to fill a knowledge gap by using national data and case studies to draw general lessons from food hub failures. By identifying lessons learned from these cases, we hope this information will assist new and existing food hubs overcome barriers to … | 2016 | Enterprise Development, Food Hubs |
| Milestone Example Budget | N/A | With sample project budget, income & expenditure budget, cashflow forecast, capital budget, and consolidated … | Business Operations, Finance, Nonprofit Management and Operations | |
| Finance and Related Matters Reference Book | MAF Europe | … | 2006 | Business Operations, Finance, Nonprofit Management and Operations |
| Peer Coaching Group Process | Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge | Step by step guidance for conducting a peer coaching … | 2016 | Facilitation, Management, Systems Leadership |
| Overcoming Obstacles to Frozen Local Produce | Common Market | This case study traces Common Market’s exploratory process, product trials, and relationship building that ultimately led to its first branded, source-identified local frozen … | 2014 | Business Operations, Distribution, Enterprise Development |
| Managing Cash Flow for a Low-Capital Food Hub Start-up | USDA | Managing Cash Flow for a Low-Capital Food Hub Start-up For food hubs, or businesses that aggregate and distribute local food, limited funds can be a barrier to growth. This publication explains the idea of cash flow and how food hub managers can use it to their advantage, drawing on the real-world experiences of the Iowa Food Hub, which collaborated with the Leopold Center and ISU Extension and Outreach to compile this information. … | 2015 | Business Operations, Food Hubs |
| Growing Local – A Community Guide to Planning for Agriculture and Food Systems | N/A | Growing Local – A Community Guide to Planning for Agriculture and Food Systems This guide is meant to help community members work with local governments to advance plans and policies to support agriculture and food production, and provide access to healthy food to all community members. Year … | Community Economic Development, Enterprise Development, Farms, Policy | |
| Value Chain Strategies for Source-Identified Minimally Processed Produce for the School Market | Washington State Department of Agriculture | Value Chain Strategies for Source-Identified Minimally Processed Produce for the School Market WSDA analyzed minimally processed fruits & vegetable supply chains in Washington State in order to identify strategies for developing the “value chain” infrastructure and relationships that might help local farms meet the demand for those products from K-12 schools and other institutional buyers. Year … | 2018 | Distribution, Enterprise Development, Farm To Institution, Processing, Supply Chain Logistics, Value Chain Coordination, Wholesale |