New Business Planning Manual for Organic Transition

Organic production offers wonderful profit opportunities for farmers, ranchers and food business owners nationwide and they are converting to organic production. Successful management of the multi-year transition requires careful business planning.

Download the Guide or make a purchase here.

SARE’s new Organic Transition: A Business Planner for Farmers, Ranchers and Food Entrepreneurs offers business owners tools to develop an actionable organic transition plan suitable for management teams and lenders. The Organic Transition Planner offers organic transition strategies and helps growers decide whether organic certification makes sense for their farm or business.

SARE promotional materials offer this: “Farmers bring the planning process alive by sharing their personal transition challenges and the business plans that helped them succeed. Minnesota dairy producers Nate and Angie Walter relate that going organic “was a way for us to remain a family farm. We were considering growing the farm (conventionally); getting bigger in hopes of paying off our debt. We knew that might be a losing proposition.” Organic Transition also includes an overview of certification, helpful worksheets and AgPlan, a business planning software program that facilitates the business planning process.”

Download Organic Transition free at www.sare.org/organic-transition-planner or order a printed copy for $16 plus shipping and handling by calling (301) 779-1007. Discounts are available for orders of 10 items or more.

Organic Transition 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. Both were written by University of Minnesota Department of Applied Economics Research Fellow Gigi DiGiacomo, University of Minnesota Department of Applied Economics Professor Robert P. King and Center for Farm Financial Management Associate Director Dale Nordquist.

Organic Transition was developed by Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) under the Tools for Transition Project, a 4-year research program on the economics of organic transition, funded by USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, with support from the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture.