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Farm Management

Annie's Project New Jersey – Rutgers Farm Risk Management

Annie’s Project New Jersey has provided farm business training for over 130 female farmers. Catherine Sorge of Ripple Hill Farm revealed, "as a result of Annie's Project, I created a Facebook page and received great feedback!" Carol Przewozny of B & B Livestock Farm noted, "A huge aspect for me was learning how to analyze my finances and seeing how we needed to change our farm business." Dr. Robin Brumfield, Rutgers University Extension Specialist explained, "we taught social media to keep the students up-to-date with new educational and financial opportunities, plus we employed our Facebook page for the students to network with each other. We are looking forward to our third year of Annie's Project of NJ to empower women farmers and keep agriculture strong and viable here in the garden state." Jeff Heckman, Rutgers University Program Coordinator for CPE Media Productions, filmed this video. Read more...
Tough Times

Farm Management During Tough Economic Times:

A one-day in-service training workshop was held June 20-21, 2011 at the Mt. Airy Resort and Casino in Mount Pocono, PA Read more. Or view presenter videos.

 
Annie's Project.

Annie's Project: Farm Business Educational Program for Women Farmers

Annie’s farm management experiences are shared with women farmers who are living and working in the highly complex business of farming. Annie’s Project New Jersey is unique in that participants focused on creating farm business plans, used social media education for marketing and business development, employed social media tools to assist in networking during the sessions as well as after graduation and recorded asynchronous education modules which is available to all farmers. Read more...
Annie's Project.

Suzanne’s Project

Suzanne’s Project, or Suzan’ın Projesi, is named after Suzanne Brumfield Yavuz, a passionate advocate for education,  sustainable food, farming and gender equality—just like her mother, Dr. Robin Brumfield. Suzanne has roots in Turkey and in the state of New Jersey (where the project model was inspired), and will one day inherit a farm in Kentucky that used to produce tobacco. Her father is Turkish and her mother is American. She visited her two sets of grandparents every summer in rural Kentucky and urban Istanbul. Read more...
Retirement planning for farm families.

Later Life Farming: Retirement Planning
for Farm Families

This website was designed to provide information about retirement planning for farm families. It specifically addresses farmers' unique circumstances. For example, many farmers don't plan to "retire" in the traditional sense. Rather, they express a desire to simply scale back their work hours and/or the size of their farm operation. In addition, many farm families lack traditional retirement savings plans such as a 401(k). Their major asset is their land and farm property, which are typically illiquid assets. Read more...
Virtual Conference: Ideas, Methods, and Objectives to Help You Manage Your Greenhouse and Nursery Business During Difficult Times.

Virtual Conference: My Business, Lean and Mean

With budgets tight, we've decided to present a conference online instead of at one of our normal venues. The theme is "Ideas, Methods, & Objectives to Help You Manage Your Greenhouse and Nursery Business During Difficult Times. " Read more...
Denise Etheridge, Production Greenhouse Manager of Homewood Nursery & Garden Center, Raleigh, NC

Developing Your Marketing Niche:
Do What You Do Best

Success today means looking for and serving niche markets.We have tips on how to find your niche and important rules for raking on a new niche. Read more...
Greenhouse with energy saving design.

The Impact of High Energy Costs
and What To Do About It

Updated! Even though energy costs are below their mid-2008 peak, Greenhouse growers still face huge energy bills. How this affected greenhouse growers? We surveyed 30 greenhouse businesses, looking at total costs and found out how they deal with high energy costs. Read more...
Competing against the Big Boxes.

How Can Small Greenhouses Compete
Against “Big Boxes”?

Consider two small towns in the heartland of America: Each has an established small grower; and, both have been invaded by a “Big Box” store. A few years later, one grower is bankrupt while the other is surviving and thriving. We visited more than 80 greenhouses, garden centers, and nurseries in the past two years to discover the “hows” and “whys” of dealing with the “Big Boxes”. Read more...
Plants for Green Rooftops could be your next niche market. Read about it in our Virtual Conference. (Photo courtesy Dr. Rob Berghage, Associate Professor of Horticulture, Penn State University)

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