Folks who are interested in these publications can find more useful info and links, as well as other free publications on our New Farmer Websites Page, our Production Resources Page, our Financing (Loans/Grants) Page, and Farm Business Planning Page, our Finding Land Page, and on many of the other pages in the navigation bar to the left. I simply haven’t had time to add them all here yet, though I will continue to work on it.
1) Resources for Beginning Farmers: Building a Sustainable Future by Beth Nelson, Caltrin Mullan, Jill O’Neill, and Debra Ellas Morse is a 64 page .pdf publication put out by the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (MISA). It provides information on: ‘Farm Vision and Goal Setting’; ‘Business Planning, Management and Marketing’; ‘Farmer Knowledge and Production Experience’; ‘Access to Financing and Means of Production’; ‘The Transition into Farming’, and ‘MISA Program Information’. It’s a great publication with very practical advice, a lot of information about the learning process for beginning farmers, and great directories of organizations, training programs, and financial resources which may be useful.
2) A free 36 page Plain Language Guide to Managing Risks on the Small Farm is available from Tufts University’s New Entry Sustainable Farm Project. They also have a Plain Language Guide to Harvesting Your Crops which was published in cooperation with the World Peas Cooperative.
3) The Kerr Center For Sustainable Agriculture offers several publications on organic farming including Small Scale Organics: A Guidebook for the Non-certified Organic Grower, Farm Made: A Guide to On-Farm Processing for Organic Producers, and offers a page of links to ATTRA Publications for Organic Transition.
4) The New England Small Farm Institute has lots of useful free Publications for Beginning Farmers on a broad range of topics. A great resource!
5) The Greenhorns publish a comprehensive and up to date Guide for Beginning Farmers ‘written to help you plan your professional trajectory into the field of sustainable agriculture’.
6) The online Soil and Health Library ‘provides a large number of free e-books available for immediate download’ in four major categories: ‘Radical Agriculture’; ‘The Restoration and Maintenance of Health’; ‘Achieving Personal Sovereignty’; and ‘Achieving Spiritual Freedom’. There are some great resources here for those interested in self sufficiency, homesteading, holistic agriculture, and agrarian philosophy.
7) USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE) has a number of topic-specific factsheets called Agricultural Innovations based on successful research projects funded by the agency.
8) A good free online guide to conducting variety trials on your farm called On-farm Variety Trials: A Guide for Organic Vegetable, Herb, and Flower Producers has been published by The Organic Seed Alliance.
9) Cornell University’s Beginning Farmer Resource Center has a number of free publications in their Beginning Farmer Learning Units. You can go directly to the publications for various ‘units’ by clicking on the links here:
- Unit 1 : Goals, Skills and Resources
- Unit 2 : Marketing what you produce
- Unit 3 : Evaluating Land and Facilities for Your Enterprise
- Unit 4 : Choosing an Enterprise
- Unit 5 : Good Stewardship is Good Business
- Unit 6 : What Will it Take to be Profitable
- Unit 7 : Regulations, Taxes and Legal Issue
