Stay ConnectedDaily farm and garden talk. All about growing vegetables profitably and efficiently on small farms and in gardens.
Each episode focuses on one specific topic – growing practices, how-to, farming challenges and struggles, sales and marketing, soil preparation, weed management, farm startup, market selection, and work-life balance.
Hosted and produced by Diego Footer’s Modern Grower Podcast Network.
Copyright: © Modern Grower
Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com takes on the question: What are some criteria to consider when selecting a homestead site? To learn more about Justin and see all of the ASK Justin episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/justin.
Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Think about an established farmers market with an established customer base. Everyone shopping at that market has their preferred vendors. They buy lettuce from this guy and they buy tomatoes from that girl week after week. They don't switch it up. If you then enter that market as a new vendor, how do you knock someone out of the preferred vendor spot in a customer's mind? How do you get the customer to switch to buying lettuce or tomatoes from you instead of that guy or that girl? Because that's really what you need to do. Either you need to get existing customers to switch or you need to pick up market share from new customers. The bad news is that once a person commits to a particular product or brand in their mind it's very hard to get them to switch. Look no further than you own habits. How often do you go to different grocery stores or gas stations by your house or how often do you change brands of laundry detergent or ketchup? Probably not very often. You made a decision long ago, and as long as things do change, why switch. Given that, how do you compete in a crowded farmers market? Why is a farmer's market customer going to choose your booth versus the booth that they always shop at? You have to be unique.. Again, look at the landscape of the market, if there are already 5 vegetable vendors at your market more or less growing what you grow, and they are established, then you either have to be unique enough to go in and compete with them hand try to knock one of them out of the top 5 in terms of market share, which is hard, or you have to be unique enough so you don't actually have to compete against them. Instead positioning yourself in the customers mind as the preferred choice. How do you do that, make yourself unique? One way is to specialize in something. Part of that specialization might mean differentiating your product so you position yourself as the category leader; a category that you own; one that you create. For example, say a lot of vendors are selling loose leaf lettuce. There's already an established hierarchy there in terms of market share for the category of loose leaf lettuce. How do you compete? You don't, avoid competition, and you create your own category. Maybe that category is head lettuce or romaine. Or maybe it's organic lettuce. Or living lettuce with the roots still attached. You differentiate your product just enough to move it to its own category. Then you become first to market in that category and have an competitive advantage. That's a far cry from going into a competitive market and competing on price. And when you think about it it wasn't really that hard. You didn't have to create or invent anything new. You just supplied an in demand product to a market that wanted it, but didn't have anyone to buy it from. That's one of the many benefits of specializing in a product. And it's that benefit and the many others that we will be talking about today, on The Urban Farmer. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support
Farmer John Suscovich of Camps Road Farm and FarmMarketingSolutions.com answers the question - How do you protect yourself from getting sued? To learn more about John and see all of the ASK John episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/john.
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THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE.
What if you could gross $100,000 per acre in a small sustainable agriculture operation? You could make a good living and/or you could afford to pay someone a decent wage. If you can gross roughly $2.50 per square foot, per year, then that translates into a gross revenue of $100,000 per acre, per year. How can permaculture techniques be used to accomplish that goal?
Chris Young of SoCal Shrooms and Closing the Loop joins me to talk about just that. His goal is to show that you can gross that $100k so you can hire one person to work an acre of land and pay them a good wage to work it. He aims to achieve this by reducing input costs and stacking revenue generators, all while improving the quality of the land and producing a high quality product.
Key Takeaways from this Episode: -Oyster mushrooms have a nice advantage of having a quick turn around. They can start creating cash-flow in 4 to 6 weeks. Similar to selling sprouts and micro-greens which have a 2 to 3 week turnaround.
-If possible tap into an existing distribution network. This gets you contacts right out of the gate.
-Get more out of the same amount of land. Property taxes will go up the future, water costs will go up in the future, and more and more land is being developed away from farmland. So try to be more productive on the same amount of land while improving the quality of that land.
-Consider the cost of your own time in the business. And pay yourself.
-You have to do the real numbers for you business.Don't fudge them. The numbers won't lie. If something isn't working, then look at the numbers and see where you can start making changes to make the numbers work. When you have exhausted all possibilities, then it is time to move on.
-Start broad and control your risk at the beginning. Then look at the numbers and refine down overtime to optimize each system or business.
-Celebrate the small victories. There is a lot of drudgery that goes along with business and farming, so enjoy the good times.
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Today I am talking to someone who tried to change the world at a young age, when her world was changed right underneath her.
The her is Hannah Eckberg. She's an entrepreneur and one of the founders of the new Permaculture Magazine North America. And like some of the other entrepreneurs that I've had on the show, think Erik Ohlsen, she as entrepreneur, whose past was heavily shaped as activist.
Hannah was essentially born into an activist role. It's almost as though activism chose her, versus her choosing it. Because at an early age an oil and gas pipeline was constructed through the ranch where her family lived. A pipeline that carried toxic chemicals. And it was dropped on them.
At young age she got to see firsthand the fight between David and goliath. The big corporate interest versus the small landowners. Her parents opposed the pipeline, It wasn't something that they wanted, but that didn't matter at the end of the day because the pipeline went in.
That experience would shape Hannah's future as from learning to read at city council meetings where her parents opposed the pipeline to becoming president of the oldest grassroots environmental organization in the country, Get Oil Out, at age 19. She's been an activist for most of her life getting behind several causes. And she has learned a lot along the way.
Today we will be talking about what she has learned. Not just related to the field of activism, but also to how her experiences have translated to business, because she recently took on a new business venture as one of the founders of the new Permaculture Magazine North America.
In this episode we get into a lot. We cover her experience being an activist, so you can be a better activist, if that's your thing. And we get into some of the takeaways form her career as an activist and how that's helped her as an entrepreneur.
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Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com takes on the question: I want to produce most of my own food. Is that crazy talk?
To learn more about Justin and see all of the ASK Justin episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/justin.
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Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer
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Today we will be looking at 17 different things that you think you might need or might need when you start your business.
Even though we will be looking at each of the items on this list through the lens of someone in their first 6 months of farming, this information extends to established business owners.
Maybe you have been in business for a while and you are thinking about redesigning your website. Should you? And does that matter? Our analysis and methodology for breaking down each of these items can be applied to many aspects of business at any time, regardless of how old the business.
There are a lot of distractions that come into play when you are running a small business, hopefully this episode will help you focus on the distractions that matter, and forget the ones that don't.
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Farmer John Suscovich of Camps Road Farm and FarmMarketingSolutions.com answers the question - How do you transport your chickens to the processor? To learn more about John and see all of the ASK John episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/john.
The Yachats Farmstore – Building connections between local farms, our ecosystem, community.
Presented by Nathan Bernard at PV3 in March 2016.
Hear more A5 talks at permaculturevoices.com/a5.
Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/129 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Today's story is about someone on a journey to become a farmer. It's a great story, but it's not the typical story that we hear about in today's world. The world today loves the magazine headline of the successful person that seemingly got there overnight. Today we'll zoom in on that overnight success and take a look at what it takes to be successful – the process of becoming successful. It's the story of farmer Seth Stallings, from Tecumseh, OK - a town with a population of just $6000 people. It's a town where Seth is starting up a pastured poultry business. Which by the way is in a state with no USDA approved slaughterhouses and no sources of organic or non-gmo feed. Not your ideal market to start a farm based business in. But it's one where Seth is making it work. He's found a niche, and making a go of it. Like he said, "No one can teach you how you are going to do it when you get to your unique scenario, you just got to do it and figure it out." In a world that loves to come up with reasons why something won't work, here's the story of someone who's said, I'm going to make it work. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/129 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support
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