Organic Farming Transition Manual Available

Posted by Rosemary Gordon|November 16, 2015

USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program recently released a new publication for organic growers. The Organic Transition: A Business Planner for Farmers, Ranchers and Food Entrepreneurs will walk you through the development of an actionable business transition plan that is suitable for yourself, your management team, or a lender.

The Organic Transition Planner is designed to help you explore organic transition strategies and decide whether going organic makes sense for your farm or business. With it you can explore critical questions such as:

What are your long-term business goals?
What organic market opportunities are you in a position to exploit?
How will you acquire the resources you need to make the transition?
How will you anticipate and deal with challenges as they arise?

The Organic Transition Planner contains explanations of key concepts, real-life examples from transitioning farmers, and detailed worksheets covering farm operations, marketing, human resources, and finances. For ease of use, electronic spreadsheets, fillable PDF worksheets, and AgPlan, a business planning software program, are all available online with the Organic Transition Planner.

The Organic Transition Planner can be used as a companion to SARE’s popular business planning guide, Building a Sustainable Business: A Guide to Developing a Business Plan for Farms and Rural Businesses.