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Customers and the competition

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Do you know what your competition is up to? If not, you could be headed for trouble because ignorance isn’t bliss when it comes to your competition. There is always competition. Even if you’re the only urban grower in town, you face competition from the sale of...

Crops with the most potential

Urban Ag home | Table of contents One of the most common questions aspiring growers ask is, “What crops should I grow?" Unfortunately, the answer is not clear cut. When choosing what to grow, it is important to balance what you can produce well, what your customers want, and what customers are...

Differentiating what you sell

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Figure 3: Consider what features motivate your customers to purchase your product. If you have a pollinator garden next to your vegetable patch, take photos and share them on social media as part of your marketing campaign. Photo by Edwin Remsberg, ©University of...

What are you selling?

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Producers see their products as the final result of their work. But, we are really seeking a different end product - a satisfied customer. Maximizing your sales potential requires producing the highest quality product. Your sales message is that “produce is not...

1. Define your product

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Who will purchase your product and why? Determine who your customers are before you put in that seed order. What are their purchasing traits? What would make a shopper select your produce over that of the grocery store’s or even another local grower? How does your...

Marketing basics

Urban Ag home | Table of contents The time-honored marketing tenets of who, what, when, and where to market any products still apply to marketing the products of urban growers. These tenets are often referred to as the 4Ps of marketing - product, price, place and promotion.| THE PRODUCT: Exactly...

Moving from producer to marketer— do what you enjoy

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Figure 2: It takes a team to make any business successful. No one person has all the skills needed! Photo by Edwin Remsberg, © University of Maryland—AGNR Image Library While your marketing efforts are still in the growing stages, develop a marketing perspective...

Urban advantages

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Figure 1: What makes your tomatoes different from all the other tomatoes your customers could buy? Photo by Edwin Remsberg, © University of Maryland—AGNR Image Library A good marketing plan begins with a firm grasp on the benefits and attributes of your product...

Chapter 3: Marketing challenges and opportunities

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Ginger S. Myers Extension Specialist, Marketing University of Maryland Extension Kim Rush Lynch Extension Educator University of Maryland Extension There are many marketing opportunities for urban farmers. When agriculture can take place literally in the customer’s...

Additional resources and literature cited

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Agricultural business planning The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook : A Complete Guide to Managing Finances, Crops, and Staff—and Making a Profit. By Richard Wiswall. Published in 2013 by Chelsea Green Publishing. Business Planning section of UMD Extension’s...

Summary

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Understand profit and cash flow is paramount to the success of the business. Profitability measures the amount of farm income generated from sales of goods and services over and above the expenses required to generate that income. An income statement is used to...

What accounting period should be used?

Urban Ag home | Table of contents An accounting period summarizes revenue and expenses for a given period of time. It can be a calendar year or a fiscal year. A calendar year starts on January 1 and ends on December 31. The year can be further broken into quarterly or monthly periods. The fiscal...

Which computer accounting program should I use?

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Some farmers record incomes and expenses in a ledger book. However, many farmers now have computers that simplify the bookkeeping. Even inexpensive computer tablets have the capacity to do record keeping. Computer accounting programs range from inexpensive to...

Recording financial transactions

Urban Ag home | Table of contents All income & expenses and inflows & outflows need to be recorded in a bookkeeping system. Farmers should set aside time each week and sometimes daily to do this. Each transaction should be recorded including the date, the amount, and the type of transaction...

Recordkeeping

Urban Ag home | Table of contents A manager of a farm needs a good record keeping system to analyze profit and cash flow. Many businesses will contract out their accounting to an accounting firm. These firms typically use generally accepted accounting principles and produce standardized financial...

Solving cash flow problems

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Most farms at one time or another experience cash flow problems. The cash flow budget is one of the best ways to pinpoint these problems, but it will not solve cash flow problems, rather it reveals symptoms of problems. Measures can then be taken to deal with the...

Usefulness of cash flow

Urban Ag home | Table of contents The cash flow is one of the most useful tools a farm manager has for managing the business. The reason that a cash flow budget is useful is because it forces you to think through all production and marketing aspects of your business. As mentioned before, many...

Example farm cash flow

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Figure 4 illustrates the cash flow for the farm in the previous example. A link to download editiable versions of these spreadsheets is at the bottom of this page. The income statement is also included to contrast the similarities and the differences in these two...

Income & expenses versus inflow & outflows

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Figure 3: The calculations to determine profit and cash are similar, but include different kinds of income and expenses. The text of this section explains these differences, marked by numbers in the figure and the text to help you refer back and forth. A cash flow...

Cash flow periods

Urban Ag home | Table of contents Cash flow usually covers the same production period as the income statement but cash flow is almost always broken down into smaller time periods such as a quarter or a month. For each period, the cash flowing out of the business is subtracted from the cash flowing...

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