business

This a great pep talk from Joel Salatin on the value of creating relationships with customers. This comes from the December 2007 issue of Acres USA magazine.

...farmers should be building relationships with customers. It’s a crying shame that farmers by and large distrust their customers. Farmers are rightfully dubious about the intentions of the grain elevator, sale barn or large processor/buyer. Rather than building a customer relationship, however, farmers feel isolated from their buyers at best, and a healthy animosity at worst.

Alternative marketing offers an antidote for this buyer-seller divorce. Many relationship-oriented marketing schemes exist. From Community Supported Agriculture to farmers markets to Internet sales to farmgate sales, all of these venues and more provide opportunities for farmers to build relationships with their constituency.

The immediate feedback about product quality, product type and product quantity creates not only accountability but also immediate encouragement. How many farmers receive praise and accolades from their customers? I noticed this most poignantly when our children were small and customers would tell them what important work their family did. “We depend on you for our food,” they would say.

Do you know what that does for the self-image of a child? In a day when farm kids routinely receive redneck stereotyping from their peers — farming, after all, is not cool like Dilbert cubicles — for ours to receive constant positive reinforcement was worth more than any amount of money. We don’t farm because we’re too stupid to do anything else; we farm because we love it and want to heal the world, and all the people in it.

Honoring and respecting our customers is part and parcel of the farm business. Most farmers do not even envision themselves as part of the food chain. They just see themselves as producers of raw commodities. Period. End of story.

And that is unfortunate. It dishonors the most noble vocation on earth, and the ultimate stewardship of air, soil and water. Building customer relationships, although challenging at times, is critical to creating a farm that can sustain itself long term.

There we are: soil, plants, animals, people, community and customers. Building relationships is the calling, the sacred ministry, of good farmers. How we massage those relationships determines our success and the degree to which we heal all the elements within our sphere of influence.

Let’s go build some relationships.

You can find the full PDF here.

I especially like the idea of "immediate feedback about product quality, product type and product quantity." This farmer-to-eater relationship is probably the biggest estimator of quality. The stronger your relationship with the eater the more care you will put into the growing of food. What comprises would you make in growing food for your children versus food that goes into an airplane for a foreign country?

I will refrain from using any more cheesy growing metaphors in this caption (you will just have to read the article to get your fill.) When I was involved with agriculture on a more day-to-day basis, I found myself talking about all subjects in terms of plants. Ideas began to "germinate" and plans "flowered." And of course, the cliché "a long row to hoe" took on a whole new meaning. I think this is a common occurrence among people who spend more time with plants than other humans. There is surely a whole alternate vocabulary for dairy farmers or meat producers.

To my surprise, I found an article on Drew's Marketing Minute through the AgriMissouri Showcase that uses the growing metaphor to explain the power of patience in marketing. The metaphor is more on the level of "gardener" than "farmer", but it is nice to see a marketer in touch with the growing world.

Here's his recipe for marketing success:

• You till the ground until it is ready for the seed.
• You enrich the ground with nutrient-rich manure.
• You carefully pick out just the right seed, perfectly suited for the time of year and climate in your state.
• You plant the seed, covering it with the rich soil.
• You water the seed, making sure it has everything it needs to grow.
• You check the garden the next day.  Nothing has broken ground.
• You water again, hoping to see a sprout of growth.
• You check the garden the following day.  Still nothing.
• Following the expert advice on the HGTV channel, you lightly water again.
• You check the garden again the next day.  Nothing.
• You figure you did something wrong, so you dig up the seed, 2 days before it would have broken ground.

This recipe echos my ideas in a post earlier this week, Small farm web marketing requires patience and persistence. May you have patience in marketing, but make sure you are watching "HGTV" to take advice throughout the process.

-----------------------------------
Small Farm Central bridges the gap between technology and agriculture by providing web services to direct marketing small farms across the country. We help farms reach their marketing potential with inexpensive, professional websites that any farmer can use. Come get a free demo today.

A little work on your website each week will add up over time. This is the final installment (Part 10) of the "Farming the Web" web development course for small farms.

Many aspects of web marketing are frustrating; I think the most difficult for most people to accept is the here-but-not-heard nature of the web. Once you have a website on your own domain anyone, anywhere in the world can type in your address and read about your small farm, but still it is so difficult to rise above the noise of the Internet and be heard especially to the people that matter: your customers. But it is possible and beneficial in the long run.

Your small farm requires attention on every front from employee issues to equipment to taxes; it is difficult to invest time in a website that may not pay back for a year or more. Each photo you upload and each blog you write gives your visitors more context and keeps them coming back over the long run. As I have advocated many times before, these loyal readers will also be loyal customers because they support and understand the work it takes to bring food to their table. They will also be more flexible with price increases, crop shortages, and quality problems due to weather (for example, a freeze or hail). They will also market for you by talking to friends and electronically forwarding on interesting articles or opportunities that you provide. In short, they become part of the extended farm family and the bigger the community around your small farm the more resilient and financially successful you will be in the long run.

Of course, you may pay more attention to your website if it is making you money directly instead of just a cost and time center. By starting locally based ecommerce you are building a market "out" and "in." By this I mean you are growing your customer base through information in blogs, photos, and other content ("out"); with ecommerce you are eliminating barriers like coops, farmer's markets, and grocery stores between you and your customers ("in"). Read last week's article for more ideas on local ecommerce.

In some ways, building your website is like working with your soil. There is a lot of advice out there on how to build both soil and websites, but in the end you have to find a way to apply those concepts to your particular situation. It may take years to realize what advice was worthwhile and what was a waste of time. Over the years, with consistent effort in doing and learning you will build your soil and your web marketing to sustain your successful small farm.

As I noted above, this is the last installment in the "Farming the Web" web development course. I hope this has been helpful -- I would love to hear your ideas of web marketing for the small farm or anything else. I am always available at info@smallfarmcentral.com.

-----------------------------------
Small Farm Central bridges the gap between technology and agriculture by providing web services to direct marketing small farms across the country. We help farms reach their marketing potential with inexpensive, professional websites that any farmer can use. Come get a free demo today.

Be creative: post your website at buyhandmade.orgIf you sell products through an ecommerce system on your farm website that can be shipped, you need to get the word out about your products. (By the way, the Small Farm Central ecommerce system is coming along well and will be ready by the middle of November, 2007.)

Try posting your site at:
http://www.buyhandmade.org/

People are taking a pledge to buy and sell handmade gifts for Christmas this year and many businesses that sell handmade products are posting links to their websites. This is a great way to get receptive eyes to your website during the holiday season.

Farming in southern New Mexico.Krystle is an aspiring farmer working on a farm in southern New Mexico. She makes a point to confront the economic aspects of farming because she has a desire to farm full-time, but knows that the farm must be economically viable. Posted below is her October 2007 newsletter. Check out her site at http://www.selfmadefarmer.com and sign up for her monthly newsletter. If you enjoy this article, you may also enjoy: Adjective-laden food and contradictions in farming

---------------------

Every business needs a business plan. A farm is no exception. Sure, there are plenty of great farms out there that never had a business plan, but most of them aren't businesses; they're recreational pursuits, where the survival of the farm doesn't depend on its ability to turn a net profit; it depends on its fulfillment of underlying ideals.

There's nothing wrong with that kind of farm (in fact, it'd be nice if there were a whole lot more of them) but it's not an option for people who depend on their own paycheck to get by. For me, no paycheck means no farm.

I recently read an article from the Rodale Institute where a farmer recounted his experiences with starting--and ending--an organic dairy farm. One statement really struck a chord with me:

"...people will try to infect you with their particular idealism, which can severely impact your profitability. Your first goal in business has to be to make a profit so you can later work toward your idealistic goals, or you will soon be out of business—and never get to the idealistic goals. I am an example of this."

As I'm plotting out a life in responsible agriculture, I really have to keep my ducks in a row and remember to focus just as much on financial sustainability as I do on ecological sustainability. That makes my task a lot harder, but it also confers a great benefit if I succeed: Every farmer who manages to become financially successful in a socially and environmentally responsible way provides a model that others can learn from and replicate. Right now, there aren't many models I've come across that embody what I'm looking for as a farmer. So I'm going to go with Gandhi's advice: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

And what are those changes I want to see? I'd like to see more people pursuing farming as a livelihood as well as a lifestyle. I'd like to see farmers with vibrant, clean and well-kept farms they've built on hard work and smart planning--not on donations, privilege, or anything that isn't available to the average person. I'd like to see such farmers offer quality products and services, and get compensated fairly by appreciative, open-minded and well-informed customers. I'd like to watch a farmer come home and have the freedom and time to spend with their family, write a book, play an instrument, and be something other than a farmer for a few hours of their day, and for a few weeks out of the year.

This would certainly be a big change, since many small farmers today are struggling with all of the above, but especially finances and quality of life. After listening to many of them, I've come to two resolutions: I don't want to make minimum wage, and I don't want to be a slave to my farm, because both are unsustainable; most people will face burnout and watch their farm crumble to pieces as a result.

Instead, I'd like to be able to present farming as a satisfying career, one that can reward you in a multitude of ways. It'll have its downsides and drawbacks, like any career, but it shouldn't require you to be a selfless workaholic in order for the farm to survive. I think that by learning from others' experiences, making careful plans, and taking things slowly, a farmer can strike quite a nice balance that most people would envy.

That's my core vision, and what I have to develop my plans around. It's still too early to write an actual business plan, since so much of my future is still in the air. For example, I don't know where I'm going to be in six months. I could still be here, but in all likelihood, I'll be going wherever my significant other finds a job after graduating, and that probably won't be here. Fortunately, I'm not tied to any specific location--I'll enjoy the challenge of being a farmer no matter where I end up. And besides, there are other things I can think about.

One thing I'm pretty sure about is that my next step is to get a full-time "day" job. For several years now, I've been all over the place with my income sources, trying out various career paths and always working more than one job (the average is three, the record is five). In retrospect, I guess I was spreading my risk and dipping my toes in various opportunities so I could learn more about myself and what I was looking for in a career. Now that my aspirations are becoming clear, however, it seems about time to narrow things down.

The question that came up was whether my day job should be a farm job. But after reviewing what kinds of agricultural jobs were out there--all the way from CSAs to livestock--I realized that it would take me several tries before finding a job I was actually content with (turnover is quite high in farming), and there would be a good deal of relocating involved. Plus, the pay and benefits are okay, at best--the more conventional the farm, the better the pay (unfortunately). And now that Hans and I are together, bouncing around the country as a farm gypsy just doesn't really fit.

The alternative I've decided on is to get a day job in an unrelated field that offers a decent, reliable pay. Thanks to my diverse work history, there are several doors open in this regard. The plan is to get a day job and start building a farm on the side. The day job will allow me to experiment with farming and develop a business model that works while still earning an income. Then, I can eventually ease from the day job into full-time farming, hopefully sooner rather than later.

How will I know when to take the leap? I've outlined a few criteria in my head. The most obvious one is when the farm generates a paycheck that's comparable to the average income in whatever town or city I'm living in. That usually ranges from $25,000 to $35,000 per year. But since farming is a seasonal business, it's not really fair to expect to make the average salary when you're not working the average 2000 hours per year. So if we divide the average salary by the average number of hours worked, it comes down to a range of $12.50 to $17.50 per hour, and that's how I'll gauge the financial success of my farm.

Another standard I've set recently is to hire someone else full-time to work on the farm before I quit my day job. It might not sound sensible at first, but my reasoning is that if I don't want to be a slave to the farm, I need to be able to get away from it once in a while, and feel like I can depend on someone else to take the reins while I'm gone. This is a VERY common problem for many farmers I've talked to, and one that I'm hoping to avoid. Of course, that means the farm will need to support two full-time incomes before I make my transition, and I plan on paying that other person a salary comparable to mine.

Now, you might be wondering, how in the world is this girl going to get a farm going that makes that much money?! The truth is, I'm wondering that, too. I have several ideas in mind for how a farm can turn a good profit. My latest idea involves forming a CSA/cooperative hybrid, but I'm still crunching the numbers on that one. Either way, I won't be able to answer the question until I actually try several ideas out and see how they work in real life.

The nice thing is that I'll be able to document my trials (and errors) through this newsletter and SelfmadeFarmer.com. At least if I never meet my farm goals, I'll have shared a good deal of insights with others--insights that they can build on and who knows? Maybe they'll hit the jackpot. Besides, I really enjoy the idea of trying to reach a lofty goal. It makes life interesting and fun, and that's a worthy achievement in and of itself.

Till next month,

Krystle http://www.selfmadefarmer.com

"I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process." -Thomas A. Edison

-----------------------------------
Small Farm Central bridges the gap between technology and agriculture by providing web services to direct marketing small farms across the country. We help farms reach their marketing potential with inexpensive, professional websites that any farmer can use. Come get a free demo today.