Are small farms profitable? Yes, but... (2024)

Looks great but does it make money?

If you are thinking about a small farm business of your own,no doubt one of your first questions will be ‘are small farms profitable’?

Small farms absolutely contribute to feeding communities andsustainable agriculture, and I personally believe they (we) are the future offood. But the question remains, can small farm businesses reliably turn aprofit?

The short answer is ‘yes’, of course small farms areprofitable. The slightly longer answer is ‘yes, provided you have put realthought and effort into your model of operations’.

But the good news is, there is more than one path to smallfarm profitability. In this article I’m going to look at half a dozenprofitable small farms, and examine some of the reasons for their success. Theytook different approaches but all found a way to make the small farm game pay.

Here’s the list:

• Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm
• Eliot Coleman, Four Season Farm
• Michael Ableman, Sole Food Street Farms
• Shannon Hayes, Sap Bush Hollow Farm
• Richard Wiswall, Cate Farm
• Jean-Martin Fortier, Les Jardins de la Grelinette (loosetranslation, 'Broadfork Garden')

Let’s start with the Prince of Pastures, Joel Salatin.

Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm

Pastured poultry is the 'mother ship enter prose' at Polyface Farm in Swope Virginia

Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm may be the best-known advocate forpasture-based farming in North America. I own several of his books, includingSalad Bar Beef, Pastured Poultry Profit$, and You Can Farm, every one of whichI heartily recommend to the new or soon-to-be farmer.

Needless to say, these books contain a wealth of practicaladvice about profitability on a small farm; here’s one of the key pieces.

Diversify, but do it intelligently. Joel and hisextended family have created multiple farm enterprises. But their key tosuccess has been to master one before adding others. Joel has used theterm ‘mother ship’ to describe the core enterprise that is the defining featureof the farm.

In an interview Joel said ‘At Polyface, our mother ship isthe pastured broiler. Even though we raise many other animals, when we thinkabout our distinctive — our claim to fame, if you will — it always revolvesaround the pastured broiler’.

Perfecting their system for pastured broilers generated profitsthat let them expand into other livestock, and a whole host of diverse andcomplementary enterprises.

To summarize Joel’s advice, diversify, but don’t spread yourselfso thin you ‘endanger the mother ship’.

EliotColeman, Four Season Farm

Eliot Coleman's answer to the question 'are small farms profitable' involves optimum use of season extension at his farm in Harborside, Maine.

If Joel Salatin is the Prince of Pastures, then EliotColeman is the High Priest of Season Extension. Eliot is the author of ‘The New Organic Grower’, ‘The Winter Harvest Handbook’, and ‘FourSeason Harvest’. And yes, I own them all (you should too).

Eliot and his wife Barabra Damrosch (author of ‘ThemeGardens’ and ‘The Garden Primer’) have profitably operated Four Season Farm inMaine for several decades. He coined the term’ farming the back side of thecalendar’, which exemplifies his approach to commercial production of freshvegetables in unheated greenhouses in cold-winter climates.

One of the goals of a small farm is to produce year-roundincome, and Eliot’s approach fulfills that mission admirably. With the rightcrop selection, intensive growing techniques and the right tools (some of whichEliot invented – see the collinear hoe), extending the season can also extendyour profits. Eliot’s books provide a wealth of information on doing just that.

MichaelAbleman, Sole Food Street Farms

An amazing farm built on pavement in Vancouver B.C. Canada

Michael Ableman is the founder of Sole Food Street Farms inVancouver, Canada and author of several books including ‘Farm The City: AToolkit for Setting Up a Successful Urban Farm’ (it’s in my library of course).

Michael has adequately demonstrated that small farms can be profitable. His bookdoesn’t shy away from the problems and challenges with urban farming andpresents a lot of very practical real world advice on transforming urban andsuburban spaces into productive farmland.

Michael places a lot of emphasis on the importance of farmplanning. ‘The successful urban farmer will develop an overall plan thatplots out the stages of a crop’s development from seed to sale, includingplanting information, harvest details, and sales’.

This good advice doesn’t just apply to urban farms, I’vewritten a couple articles about data-driven decision making and the importanceof record-keeping. Michael has embodied this to an awesome degree.

RichardWiswall, Cate Farm

Ready for spring at Cate Farm, East Montpelier, Vermont

Richard is the owner of Cate Farm and the author of ‘The Organic Farmer’s BusinessHandbook: A Complete Guide to Managing Finances, Crops, and Staff- and Making aProfit’. I’ve got the soft copy of this one from Amazon, the hard copy bookdoesn’t ship to Canada.

As you might guess from the book title, Richard’s emphasisis on understanding that a successful, profitable farm is a business. In hisview, ‘profit’ is something you plan for; business planning andfinancial management are critical to small farm success. His book is full ofgood examples of how to do just that. Absolutely worth the price.

ShannonHayes, Sap Bush Hollow Farm

Shannon and family operate multiple enterprises in West Fulton New York

Shannon of Sap Bush Hollow Farm is a farmer,multiple business owner, and author of ‘Radical Homemaker’s and ‘RedefiningRich’. In the latter book she makes the case that ‘quality’ is more important than ‘quantity’ when itcomes to designing your life.

No mistake, profitability is important, but you can’t losesight of your Vision while pursuing a livelihood.

Her Vision isencapsulated in a Quality of Life statement, which not only describes her priorities– family and community and contribution – but also what she is willing to giveup or put up with to pursue that Vision.

I’ve written before about the power of Vision to determineyour priorities and motivate your actions. Shannon does a great job ofexplaining the importance of that in your own business.

Jean-Martin Fortier, Les Jardins de la Grelinette

Jean-Martin and Maude-Hélène Desroches at their market garden at St-Armand au sud in Quebec.

Jean-Martin Fortier, Les Jardins de la Grelinette, is the author of 'The Market Gardener' (I got it). Jean-Martin and hispartner Maude-Hélène Desroches havemanaged the impressive feat of generating a 6-figure income in an organic marketgarden approximately 1.5 acres in size. They use low-tech but high-efficiency methods includingeffective use of crop rotations, permanent raised beds, season extension andintensive planting.

But I think the key message is Jean-Martin and Maude-Hélène havecreated systems that work for them, combining these techniques intelligently to reduce labour and increaseprofitability.

For example stale bed planting using tarps to pre-sprout and kill weedsallows intensive planting because the need for weeding is reduced.

Thepermanent raised beds means primary tillage is eliminated, and water andnutrients can be concentrated They manage this highly efficient garden with handtools e.g. the broadfork, reducing machinery expenses.

Jean-Martin's book is highly recommended to any grower interested in 'human-scale' agriculture. It's a definitive answer to the question 'are small farms profitable'.

Aresmall farms profitable? The New Terra Farm Answer

This is the profitable model we developed for New Terra Farm

So to summarize: the answer to the question 'are small farms profitable' is emphatically YES... if you diversify intelligently, make maximum use of season extension, employ detailed farm planning and business planning, keep site of your Vision to stay on-track, and create integrated systems to reduce work and increase profitability.

Honestly, I would hesitate to compare myself as a farmer oran author to the amazing people described in this article. But my owncontribution to making small farms profitable is my Planning, Marketing, Management, and Production model, first developed way back in 2005. I know it has helped a number of growers build their own profitable small farm businesses.

We achieved our success through our own ‘mother ship’, our CSAMarket Garden. The garden came first, then we added pastured poultry, pork andvalue-added products to our offering, most of which was bought by our CSAcustomer base.

And we have a couple unheated hoop houses for seasonextension, and I actually teach a course about business planning and operational planning for smallfarms. So I’m following in the footsteps of these awesome growers. You couldprobably benefit from doing the same.

You can get my CSA model here in my Bootstrap Market Gardening book, or get the whole New Terra Farm story (market garden, greenhouses, raising pastured pigs and poultry) in my complete Start Farming Pack.