    Designer agriculture; learn how to develop your farms clientele (Farmers Markets, CSA’s, Wholesale, Co-Ops etc), obtain resources on where to run ads (web, print), communication, pricing and value added items.     

<div> <div> <div> <div> <p>Designer agriculture; learn how to develop your farms clientele (Farmers Markets, CSA’s, Wholesale, Co-Ops etc), obtain resources on where to run ads (web, print), communication, pricing and value added items. </p> </div> </div> </div> </div>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Agriculture

Things to Know Before You Become a Farmer

Brad Johnson

Equipping Yourself Mentally

We farm in Northern California and we're going to present today quite a large topic of what our farming operation is about and also this particular session, you know, what it mentally what's it take.

I mean that's a huge thing but and Just just let you know I don't you heard in the main Session that 1 of the I was dividing my session to this afternoon with David over Miller and So he's not here now.

He had to be coming in late So he's going to move tomorrow, and I'm going to move my class from tomorrow up to today, so we're moving establishing your market Just after this session, and then we're taking the future of ag and moving it into tomorrow So just so you understand that so this this is pretty much.

I'm going to run through my PowerPoint and then this is fairly a long session and if you have questions we'll try to maybe move it.

Is everybody going to be here in the session, the next session or is everybody moving around?

If you do then you it'll kind of, this could kind of blend into the next 1, depending on time.

This presentation began, in my mind, as more of a discussion or presentation of how and what the farm but the question that developed is why I Will touch on that being it is the question to answer the real reason or motivation behind the what and how?

Where the passion and motivation come from.

So there was a farmer, a doctor, and a lawyer in a three-way split on a large sum of money.

In an interview they asked the doctor what he was going to do with his money.

He said he was going to build a surgery suite onto his hospital.

They asked a lawyer and he said he was going to invest it in some stocks.

When they came to the farmer, he thought about it a while and then said, well, I guess I'll keep farming till the money runs out.

A point I'd like to make is, you can make it in farming, but I wouldn't be where I am now without all the help along the way, from acquiring land, support from family, neighbors and friends, generous with their equipment, land, and time, great marketers, research people, and the people who want what we grow.

In this presentation we will endeavor to cover many things regarding farming, gardening, business, family, and answer questions.

I will try to make time for questions, but there's a lot to cover in this, so please remember your questions and we will try to have time for them.

My concern is we try to gather up a lifetime of this in a day or 2 and it be discouraging, like eating too much and getting indigestion, but hopefully not.

These topics we will go over, these are the topics we will go over.

Equipping yourself mentally, counting the cost, the future of ag business models, embarking on your ag venture, business management, establishing your market, and how does family fit in.

When I first received these topics and questions for discussion, I thought it sounded like asking, what is the meaning of life?

The process of putting this together seems more difficult in some respects than farming for me.

I have struggled to come up with my own answers to these questions and put them together in a coherent way.

I'm trying to present something to you meaningful and practical so you can apply it to your situation.

It is personal, so not so much theoretical.

I'm telling you what we do, where life has taken us, not as experts but through an experiential knowledge over time, though some of these questions need a more general answer that you will need to make personal.

The sequence of these days and topics will likely blend into each other.

Kind of like asking me what an elephant looks like, when perhaps all I'm seeing is the feet and tail, because I've been in the same circle for 60 some years, farming the same ground in the same place.

Some may think we are a major operation or a picture-perfect model.

We innovate, make do, improvise, try to work within the dollars we have, sometimes stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime.

I consider us relatively primitive and small-scale.

This can be, like I said before, this can be somewhat encouraging and discouraging.

Prey, disc, plant, prey, cultivate, irrigate, prey, fertilizer, spray, prey, weather, repairs, prey, etc.

When they get my call it would go, work, work, work, work, work.

Not all that way, but sometimes it seems so.

Equipping yourself mentally, counting the cost, what is your mentality towards farming, how much do you need to make, how passionate are you about doing farming, do you have what it takes, what does it take, How long will it take to reach viability?

These are some questions I was given to help answer, But first I will show you an overview of some of what we do, primarily the vegetable production of our farm, and then get into more detail on these questions.

When I look at dirt, I start to think about growing stuff.

My answer as a farmer, we turn sunshine, water, dirt, and the grace of God into something good to eat as a Salesman we grow produce and sell romance.

I will try to give you a taste or flavor of our farming experience.

It's beauty and the beast in more ways than 1.

And I'm not just talking about Judy and me, but the satisfaction and the struggles, to put it lightly.

I'm picking a few features to share with you, some of our farming roots.

I'm guessing most here are involved in farming or gardening in some fashion, organic, conventional, or a combo of the 2.

My personal land is in organics, and that is my primary emphasis, but I have some involvement in the conventional side as well.

I think both have something to offer our economic and learning experience.

So I'm wondering what your experience is.

Just for my own help here, how many of you farm for your primary source of living?

My presentation is part information, part inspiration, part our journey, a little romance, and part what was that?

But I think it speaks more to the human side of our farm.

First, I have a few core motivating directives that form some of my thinking.

Every human being, created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the Creator, individuality, power to think and to do.

And this, of course, I'm bending this to the farming side in dirt.

A Verse says, God placed man in this special garden called the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it beautiful.

And another, God arranged a special garden for man to live in, which was located in an area called Eden.

This is the place where the first man made his home.

In this garden, God not only placed trees for food, but also ornamental trees, most beautiful to look at.

So I picture a garden as the origin of my first home and a place of pleasure to work.

We have made a day of rest a priority, taking Saturday as a day of rest.

Many associated with us may wonder at times, why?

And I as well, at times, find it difficult to make the discipline.

The biology of the work calls and many needs do not stop.

The plants need water, the cows need milking, etc.

Though the human side of our farm stops to rest, to look, enjoy, and learn without the driving force of business.

We love to visit, or not, and enjoy the quietness and beauty of life.

In the cultivation of the soil, the thoughtful worker will find that treasures little dreamed of are opening up before him.

No 1 can succeed in agriculture or gardening without attention to the laws involved.

There are some good things that have developed for me over the years.

Establishing Your Market

So again, my name's Brad Johnson, and we're going to be going through establishing your market.

So just so you know, just because I'm California, those really are tomato plants.

So this won't be as long as that last session I had if you guys have more questions.

I didn't take up too much time on this 1.

Farmers markets, CSAs, wholesale, co-ops, resources, communication, pricing, adding value.

Which comes first the market or the product?

So with the vegetable business for us we started with growing products and learned how and what we wanted to grow and basically did both simultaneously over the last 40 years.

I spent time on the phone calling buyers, driving truck, doing fruit stands, selling roadside out of a pickup with an umbrella or under a shade tree.

I developed a route of places that would buy from us over to the coast and back.

Back when we had no certification, organic certification, just a 1, Back then we had no organic certification, just a 1 or 2 paragraph page explaining our practices.

But we would sell to all who wanted our product.

So in case you, this is just what we did, produced, we gave this either to our wholesale buyers or anybody that we sold to that wanted to know our practices.

We are a family farm operation located 70 miles north of Sacramento.

We hope in our program we are able to bring a product to you with its finest potential of minerals, enzymes, and flavor.

Our program of building the soil includes compost, rock dust, manure, cover crops, occasional foliar applications of kelp and other natural elements if needed.

Insect control is obtained by using beneficial insects, mechanical or physical means.

However, if spraying is necessary, we use natural occurring compounds.

Weeds are controlled by using mulch, mechanical and physical cultivation.

We do not use synthetic fertilizers or compounds.

We have been working with commercial scale organic farming since 1975.

Each year we learn new things and make improvements.

We hope you are satisfied with our produce.

We welcome any helpful suggestions." To me, that seems adequate for what we do today.

It's just in the meantime between then and now, there's a whole bunch of paperwork involved.

So this is just a picture of me hauling, I think I was probably hauling watermelons into San Francisco on a little one-ton truck.

Getting ready to go in there and Probably 120, 150 miles somewhere in there.

When we first started in the 70s, we grew organically and the local people didn't care so much, just wanted cheap and fresh.

So we found we could sell or truck into San Francisco into distributors and get better prices there at wholesale Than retail at local so that is where our markets developed so we learned what pack What the wholesale markets needed for example our pack of heirloom tomatoes is a 10-pound single layer.

The market is much more forgiving for an heirloom pack than slicer tomatoes because heirlooms are not a uniform tomato.

But even still, as the market is more competitive, the quality is still important.

I don't know area to area around the U.S., but I would go to the market in your area, like I would go to my market in my area, and find out what was being grown wholesale, and look at their pack, decide how to what they wanted to receive it at and that's how we did it.

We pack a cucumber pack, a 25 pound cucumber pack and then it's all sized.

We have large, medium and small in the cucumber pack.

We have medium, what do you call the middle ones?

And sunburst, we do small, medium, and large.

Or basically, you know, we call them fancy and extra fancy and mediums.

Eggplant is by size and weight and count.

So we do either 20 or 25 pound box, and it was an 18 to 24 count per box on the standard pack.

Roma tomatoes, we do by size, weight, and color.

And then for a while, we did this little clamshell pack.

And if you do a pack like that, of course, you know, there's another regulation that said that you've got to do, if you close the box, close the package, then you need a UPC code and labeling and all that if you put it into a package.

And you got, we'd have to put that on the bottom.

So when they scan it, it would be on, it'd keep the package.

I don't know what they are now, because we got away from that probably, I don't know, that's probably 20 years ago.

So you have to buy a register, whatever, with the, get your code and all that stuff.

And now it's come back again since the food regulation, we've kind of moved back into it again.

So for wholesale, we look for the quality of pack and do our best to provide that for our customers.

Over time, we became more reliable and better at growing and packing and our packing systems.

Our markets began to recognize us and we began to learn who we wanted to do business with, who we could trust, and they to us.

And for us, because organic demand was growing and that was our practice that continued to grow.

Eventually we got acquainted through our sales with a produce salesman who wanted to make a change and came to live on our farm and do sales.

Then he transitioned into a full-time broker in his own business with a partner selling our farm products as well as other farms products.

Prior to that I was doing all my own sales as well as our farming and harvesting business, but it has been a great relationship between our broker and us, a real trusting friendship.

I recommend to find people you can trust in the marketplace.

Find your produce distribution place in your area and get acquainted as a possible place to market your produce.

Find out what type of pack and quality is needed for your markets.

Well, yeah, and I'll get into that a little bit.

So what happens if it doesn't work that way?

Well, what our, and maybe it's not answering the question quite, but what we've kind of eliminated with our broker, we trust him.

I mean, he's probably, in my opinion, he and his partner are probably some of the best in the business.

They not only sell our product, but they sell whatever we produce.

It's not like, you know, we used to, what we used to do is we would go, we'd grow, we'd start growing stuff and then we, like 1 market we had, we could easily out produce what they would take.

It's almost like, oh we got 20 boxes, okay, we got 50, oh sorry, and then you had to start bouncing around.

What they do, he does, so he's our focus, and then he goes like this to the market for our products.

But in answer to your question, what can happen is, so maybe what I was getting to is he, so then he filters it out, and they have, I don't know, their paperwork that they fill out with their buyers in order to establish if they don't pay or that kind of stuff.

But yeah, We've had, later on in my presentation here, 1 of the bad things is early on, you didn't know if you could trust somebody.

We sold to 1 company for 30 days, and they went bankrupt.

And 30 days of produce shipping is a lot.

And they were down in LA, and we went down to see what was going on, and they'd closed up their doors, and they were gone, so was our money.

So finding people who you can trust is, and how to establish that?

Yeah, you know, you might interview other people who do business with them, you know, or find out, kind of like you would an employee, so, you know, you maybe have, they have a record, you know, or better business viewer or whoever, I'm not sure, but we have not really gone that route.

It's kind of like, well, that didn't work out, we're not gonna do business with them anymore.

You know, it's been more the hard knocks in a lot of ways.

You go to meet them face-to-face and you know you kind of get established that way.

So currently regarding pricing we rely on our broker to sell, but we continue to keep in touch with the people who buy from us, at least sometime, someway during the year with personal visits at their offices or store, or inviting them to our farm for a tour or such.

We're not personally on the phone with them as much.

So since we've kind of, this is our broker here.

Since I do business, he does our business for us.

What we do now because we know our buyers, we know who he does business with, because we used to work with them directly.

And so now what I do, not on everybody, every basis, I will go see them sometime and visit them face to face, or invite them to come to the farm and see what we're doing and that kind of thing.

Now this picture I put it in partly because we did this last year, cucumbers, and part of our, as if we're doing wholesale and pricing, you know, you've got to have a quality pack because you're selling retail basically at wholesale level because they're going to put it on the shelf and then when everybody looks at it, it's got to be perfect.

So we went to stringing up our cucumbers this year.

We used to grow them on the ground and hand pick them off the ground.

Embarking on Your (Ag)Venture

So this this class this time we're talking about embarking on your ag venture.

Not sure who invented that term, but I think it's 1 of the Ad Agribords members.

So finding ideal property, price, location, climate, soil, zoning, land in the family, buyer rent.

If you're leasing, how to do the legal parts.

I'm not sure we'll get into too much of that, but certain types.

Lease agreements, making do with the land you have, infrastructure for efficiency.

We'll talk about post-harvest handling and how we set up our systems for propagating, harvesting, washing, packing, and shipping, more or less.

The question I was asked is, should we find ideal property?

Within your price range or economics of what you grow or bring capital from other places or from the momentum of time and money already in your business.

Make friends with your neighbors who are getting older with no family or interest.

We have acquired property this way and in some cases at the right price, at the right time for a good price.

Yes, but we have shipped on airplanes and ships so it depends on what you're growing.

I think it is important to be close to, more important possibly, close to services.

We are close to grading stations like for grading your fruit dehydrators canneries refrigeration services All within a closer distance if you don't have those or depend on the crop you're growing So if you have a forklift and a truck and trucking you can get stuff there.

I like being at least near a main trucking route to get the service of trucks to come to our farm and pick up with some kind of turnaround.

In other words, a turnaround to get their trucks in and out.

Near cities, yes, or towns, people need to eat.

But you can cover 100 to 200 miles pretty fast with a vehicle.

We have good climate in California for a lot of crops.

So I'm not sure about climate where you guys other people might be But what else is out there besides, California?

Okay, I thought we were the only place that grew stuff, okay so climate may dictate more of your growing options, or you may want to modify your growing with, say, hoop houses.

We do that somewhat, but not to a large degree.

We have stressed the edges in our area and produced pineapple at our place for fun.

When analyzing the soil, here's something I would do, if possible, talk to long-time neighbors.

I've lived in the same place all my life and talked to those born as early as 1900 and later.

I know about some of the land and weather in my immediate area.

Some soils are better for some crops than others.

Prunes, peaches, citrus, walnuts, rice, vegetables, cattle, etc.

It can take years to see what takes place.

I currently see land for sale near mine that looks great because we have been having dry years, and it was planted then.

But if we get a prolonged wet spring, whoever buys it without knowing will lose a lot of trees.

But also there are some pretty accurate soil maps.

I have a piece of property that has an area that doesn't grow things well.

And a few years ago I hired a farm advisor to help me with my irrigation planning.

He brought out some soil survey maps made before my time, and they showed that small area of my field having a different soil type.

I was amazed at the accuracy for such a small area from for long ago.

I think this came from maybe the extension office.

And they actually have on our wall at our extension office soil profiles.

So they've taken chunks of soil and made a map on the wall with actual dirt, blocks of dirt that shows you the profile of that type of soil that names it what it is.

Another thing, another thing we do if possible is take a backhoe out and dig various holes to check the soil profile.

And yes, do soil analysis and get help with that from someone who knows.

The detail of that you can discuss with the experts, but also just walking the fields and observing.

Series

Things to Know Before You Become a Farmer

Establishing Your Market

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Things to Know Before You Become a Farmer

Embarking on Your (Ag)Venture

1h

Short Course: Beginning Market Farming

Beginning Market Farming- Part 2

1h

Market Farming/Gardening

2- Better Together Farms & Eastward Gardens

59m

Things to Know Before You Become a Farmer

Equipping Yourself Mentally

57m

Plenary

Youth Panel

47m

Intensive: Introduction to Market Gardening

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 5

56m

Breakout Session 4

Methods Without Madness

59m

Starting a Market Garden

Growing Better, Not Bigger

1h 6m

Market Gardening

The What & Why of Market Gardening

1h 3m

Market Gardening

Why Farm for a Living?

57m

Intensive: Market Gardening

Market Gardening Part 4

53m

Sound Doctrine