STRATEGIC PLANNING

Starting and managing a farm business takes imagination. As you are hand-weeding that long row of garlic, tossing out hay for the livestock, or reflecting with your morning cup of coffee, it is important to dream about your farm business. In this first chapter, we encourage you to think about the values that you bring to the business, establish a vision and mission for your ideal farm, and set goals that will guide and inspire you as you move forward. To inform this creative process, you begin by working through an assessment of your farm business: the human resources — the personalities and skills of the people who form your farm team — as well as the natural resources of your property that influence your choices about what to grow and produce. If you do not yet own or lease a farm, this is a first step in organizing your thoughts to begin creating a plan for your future farm business.

BY THE END OF THIS CHAPTER YOU WILL BE ABLE TO:

• Outline a whole farm planning process that helps you achieve your personal and business goals.

• Identify the vision and values for your farm business.

• Write a draft mission statement for your farm business.

• Develop an inventory and assessment of the natural and physical resources that describe your farm (or potential farm).

• Identify your farm team and work with that group of people to build your farm business.

• Create a draft SWOT analysis for your farm business.

WHOLE FARM PLANNING

As a farmer, you need to make many interconnected decisions. What you do for one aspect of the farm affects or has implications for other parts of the farm. For example:

• The goals and desires you share with your family and other business partners directly affect the kind of farm business and mission statement you create.

• The infrastructure and equipment you have on your farm influence your choices of what you can grow and your ability to keep crops productive through cold or hot weather.

When taking a whole farm perspective, farmers and ranchers have to manage, or at least be aware of, many different components within the farm system. The Whole Farm Components illustration (page 000), with its various intersections and overlapping circles, shows how the different elements interrelate and affect each other.

WHOLE FARM COMPONENTS

HUMAN

• Farm team and employees

• Seasonal labor

• Family members

• Customers

• Suppliers

• Advisors

• Local community

PHYSICAL

• Soil

• Water

• Land features

• Infrastructure

• Equipment

BIOLOGICAL

• Crops

• Livestock

• Soil organisms

• Pests

• Wildlife

• Natural vegetation

FINANCIAL

• Marketing

• Profitability

• Financial accounting

• Liability

• Taxes

• Payroll

In this book, we focus on whole farm planning as a strategy to deal with this complexity. Whole farm planning helps you identify the many connections and interactions within the farm and develop an integrated approach to decision-making that considers all the components of the farm business — environmental, economic, and social. A whole farm plan:

• Provides a road map for the future

• Helps you plan for future profitability

• Provides a foundation from which to expand and/or change your farm business

• Serves as a reference document

• Is a flexible, "living" process that should be regularly

To assist you in developing your own whole farm plan, we include a whole farm plan template —23 separate worksheets (appendices 1–1 through 1–23) referenced throughout the book and identified by the Farm Plan icon. Where this icon appears, you will find a brief description of the worksheet, plus instructions or suggestions for completing the form.

Farm plan worksheets are also available as Adobe PDF forms at ((add Storey site name)). You can download the PDF forms to your computer and then type directly into them and save them for your personal use. Full instructions are provided on the website. If you complete all the worksheets, you will have a basic whole farm plan that you can continue developing as you grow your business.

HUMAN RESOURCES

Let us begin by looking at the social and human side of owning and operating a farm business.

• Who is involved in the farm business?

• What are your skills, both individually and collectively?

• What lifestyle do you envision?

• What is your relationship to your surrounding community?

Tasks and Responsibilities in a Farm Business

To begin answering those questions, it is important to first consider what is actually involved in running a farm business. What tasks and responsibilities are on a farmer's to-do list? An initial list might include the following:

• Grow crops

• Raise animals

• Develop relationships with the surrounding community

• Purchase and maintain tools and...