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PureHarvest · February 10, 2016

I highly recommend 'The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook' by Richard Wiswall.
It comes with a CD you can put into your computer. It has an easy to follow enterprise budget for each crop you might grow.
There is no getting around using some form of data management for planning. Usually this means a spreadsheet.
But, with the tool mentioned above, the sheet is already built, and you plug in your own history or projections.
I found it easy to use, considering that I had found all previous templates confusing or not based it reality.
The cool thing is that it forces you to come up with a base land unit for your scale, and assign values to each material or labor step.
For example, your base unit might be a 50' row. You then assign values to every step you do for that unit.
You can then evaluate what each crop costs you to grow and which crop makes you the most money because you are using the same base land unit.

February 10, 2016	#3
PureHarvest Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2014 Location: Mid-Atlantic right on the line of Zone 7a and 7b Posts: 1,369	I highly recommend 'The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook' by Richard Wiswall. It comes with a CD you can put into your computer. It has an easy to follow enterprise budget for each crop you might grow. There is no getting around using some form of data management for planning. Usually this means a spreadsheet. But, with the tool mentioned above, the sheet is already built, and you plug in your own history or projections. I found it easy to use, considering that I had found all previous templates confusing or not based it reality. The cool thing is that it forces you to come up with a base land unit for your scale, and assign values to each material or labor step. For example, your base unit might be a 50' row. You then assign values to every step you do for that unit. You can then evaluate what each crop costs you to grow and which crop makes you the most money because you are using the same base land unit. Last edited by PureHarvest; February 10, 2016 at 08:30 AM.