Free Web Publications for New Farmers

Folks who are interested in these publications can find more useful info and links, as well as other free web publications for farmers 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.

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 and Farm Made: A Guide to On-Farm Processing for Organic Producers.

4) The New England Small Farm Institute has lots of useful free Publications for Beginning Farmerson 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) 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.

7) 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 was published by The Organic Seed Alliance.

8) Cornell University’s Beginning Farmer Resource Center has a number of free publications.