Value-Added Agriculture

…teaching farmers to be business CEOs

In these times of Wall Street collapses, banking bankruptcies, massive unemployment, homelessness and increasing deprivation, we in the rural sector are already living in Great Depression-II even as the city folk and DC denizens keep talking about mere recession. We have a new President who has promised “hope” to Americans, and who appointed a Monsanto apologist to be Secretary of Agriculture, thereby slapping every struggling small farmer and ardent homesteader in the face.

Hope is all very nice in a made-for-TV movie or light novel, but we all know you can’t eat it, live in it, pay your doctor with it or drive it to a day-job. We’re going to need more than hope and slaps in the face to get through all this piper-paying. And despite Obama’s lousy choice for SecAg, there are some people in DC who do seem to understand that while cities are where the bread and circuses are distracting the population from their deprivations, if we allow the rural backbone to disintegrate people won’t just be deprived. They’ll be starving to death.

Many of us modern homesteaders came to our lifelong labors of love from those cities and megaburbs, once living large with boom economy jobs and the whole rat race. Then gave it all up very much on purpose so we could build new lives for ourselves and our families that really mean something. Those of us with college degrees (some quite advanced), may have even taken a few courses in basic business management and/or economics and/or marketing to help us get those city jobs we left behind when we moved to the hinterlands where the farmers live.

As the various tentacles of the economic stimulus package reach into the states, some state legislatures are working hard to earmark some of the funds for rural business development. Rural, farm-based businesses that produce not just raw materials but finished (or partially finished) products for sale are what is called Value Added Agriculture.

Value added agriculture makes a different kind of business out of the usual small farm business of growing basic commodities and then selling them to buyers representing big food producers and conglomerates. It’s not just selling milk from your cows to the local dairy, but making cheese out of the milk and selling that to grocery stores, restaurants and sometimes directly to retail customers. Instead of just being the raw resource miner, the farmstead becomes the producing ‘middleman’ in the chain of getting raw resources processed and to consumers all over the world.

State land grant universities in all states are beginning to offer these business management courses through their agricultural departments to farmers and homesteaders. Some extension agencies are also offering classes free or very cheap, so a farm family can learn the details and develop their ideas over time while still maintaining their dirt-based day jobs.

Some of the better resources I’ve found out on the web to help homesteaders take this next step toward better income and community job resource come from various sustainable agricultural organizations. Keys to Success in Value-Added Agriculture is a 20-page booklet that offers a very good overview of the issues and solutions involved in adding value to your commodities. The USDA’s Rural Development branch has information and applications for their value-added producer grant program to provide funding for farm-based entrepreneurs.

The Ag Marketing Resource Center, a national partnership of land grant institutions and state departments of agriculture, offers a portal to their gathered resources for those interested in value-added agriculture. These include market research, business development grants and success stories from all over the country.

So if your family would like to expand your homestead’s horizons this year, check out these resources and don’t hesitate to use them as portals to more information and more help in getting started. It’s our lives and chosen lifestyles on the line, and none of us should lose these to the failure of political and economic leadership in recent years. If readers have their own success stories or ideas to share, please do!

Links:

Disconcerting: Tom Vilsack at USDA
Legislation introduced to invest money in ag industry
USDA: Value-Added Producer Grants
Agricultural Marketing Resource Center

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Filed under Activities, Alternatives, Economics, Farm Policy, Future Planning, Homestead, Rural Development | Comment (1)