New Entry's farmer library has hundreds of resources on sustainable farming, marketing, and operating a successful small business. Our physical library at our office in Beverly, MA contains books, CD's, DVD's periodicals, pamphlets, and videos in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Khmer. You can also search the directory below for downloadable digital resources, helpful web sites, and online farming videos.
Please visit or email us at nesfp@tufts.edu if you can't find what you're looking for here. Sometimes we are out in the field, so it's best to let us know if you're planning on stopping by.
Marketing can help you decide what to grow or produce, choose where and how you want to sell it, differentiate yourself from other farmers, and make effective use of social media and other marketing tools. Learn the basics to doing your own marketing or supervising someone else. This series of 4 webinars is designed as a complete marketing class, but you can view each one as a stand alone course.
Webinar 3: Creating a Strong Brand for Your Farm
Your farm brand consists of everything that you offer, say, or do, from the quality of your produce or meat to the color of your logo to the way you greet your customers. This session will explain how to creating a clear, consistent, and compelling brand that can help people remember your farm, build customer loyalty, and increase sales.
About the Instructor:
Myrna Greenfield, founder and “Top Egg” at Good Egg Marketing, provides expert marketing for good food and good causes. Good Egg helps businesses increase sales and build customer loyalty through brand development, sales and marketing strategies, websites, and social media. Greenfield is a frequent speaker, trainer and workshop presenter. She holds an MBA from the Simmons School of Management and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Marketing can help you decide what to grow or produce, choose where and how you want to sell it, differentiate yourself from other farmers, and make effective use of social media and other marketing tools. Learn the basics of doing your own marketing or supervising someone else. This series of 4 webinars is designed as a complete marketing class, but you can view each one as a stand alone course.
Webinar 1: Use Market Research to Guide Farm Business Decisions
If you want to grow your business, you need to sell more to your existing customers, sell to new customers, and/or expand the number of products or services you offer. Market research can help you generate new ideas and choose the best options. This session will show you how to use basic market research to assess market trends, understand your current or potential customers, and decide what products, prices and channels make sense for your farm.
About the Instructor:
Myrna Greenfield, founder and “Top Egg” at Good Egg Marketing, provides expert marketing for good food and good causes. Good Egg helps businesses increase sales and build customer loyalty through brand development, sales and marketing strategies, websites, and social media. Greenfield is a frequent speaker, trainer and workshop presenter. She holds and MBA from the Simmons School of Management and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Using this guide, farmers will learn about weeds, why it is important to manage them, and about different tools, techniques, and approaches for weed management they can use in their fields. They also review the effect of tilling on soil health. This teaching resource was developed by Global Gardens in Boise, Idaho in partnership with the Institute for Social and Economic Development (ISED Solutions). Refugee farmer training programs across the country provided feedback on this lesson, which is now integrated throughout the guide.
Farmers benefit from building knowledge about often nuanced and complex farm labor legal obligations. Farmers need to know more about their employment law obligations before they can set priorities, decide on action steps and begin to take action. This fact sheet covers basic farm employment law in West Virginia: minimum wage, overtime, meal and rest breaks, workers' compensation, and unemployment insurance.
Curious what a CSA really is? Check out this handy primer to learn about building robust local economies around fresh, local food and vibrant community!
The What’s SNAP got to do with it? Expanding your Customer Base with Food Nutrition Programs and Technology fact sheet, is product of the Investing in Your Farm: Accessing Grants and Loans for Growing Your Business workshop series, hosted by the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project.
In this Fact Sheet (PDF) you can find information about the following topics: Food and nutrition programs, supporting new farmers to reach new customer bases, and Farmers Market Nutrition Program.
For additional information please reach out: nesfp@tufts.edu
The What’s SNAP got to do with it? Expanding your Customer Base with Food Nutrition Programs and Technology recording, is part of the Investing in Your Farm: Accessing Grants and Loans for Growing Your Business workshop series, hosted by the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project.
In this webinar, instructors share knowledge/understanding of state/federal grant and loan programs. Topics covered in the workshop include:
Bring SNAP into farmers' bussiness model
How to Become SNAP authorized at farm stands and farmers' markets
Application process and accountability
Information on subsidized SNAP processing equipment and the MA Healthy Incentive Program
Values-based planning and evaluation tool designed to measure the qualitative and quantitative impacts of community-based food projects - developed by the Center for Whole Communities in collaboration with the Community Food Security Coalition. From the guide: “Whole Measures for Community Food Systems is designed to give organizations and communities a collaborative process for defining and expressing their complex stories and the multiple outcomes that emerge from their work.”
Global Growers developed a series of resources related to providing technical assistance to farmers with previous experience in commercial agriculture. Our technical assistance process begins with the Wholesale Readiness Assessment Tool. After the tool is implemented, theservice provider creates an individualized education plan (IEP) together with the farmer to map learning objectives. As we began to identify individual farmers’ learning goals, we started to create one-pager information sheets on market-readiness themes. The goal of the process and approach is to be learner-centered, rather than content-driven. While content is available, it is shared based on readiness and willingness of the learner to engage based on individual objectives identified.
