Summary: What if you didn’t grow up on a farm but want to be a farmer? Where would you start? For many, it’s the direct-to-consumer market and the Business Bootcamp program helps these new farmers understand the ins and outs of running an agricultural business in this rapidly growing sector of Canadian agriculture. Aspiring farmers learn about everything from startup capital to business plans to product development and more from farmers who are already doing it.
For many new direct-to-consumer farmers, growing a crop is easy. It’s the business side of running a farm that’s more challenging. Here’s how one organization is bridging that gap.
The road from wanting to be a farmer to actually being a farmer can be a long and winding one.
Having a good map, learning the necessary skills and building community with peers and experts can really help make the trip a lot smoother. Luckily all of that is available to new farmers through the Business Bootcamp, an 11-week course developed and run by the Young Agrarians (YA), an educational resource network aimed at new farmers.
“The bootcamp came about after recognizing a need in our new farmer network for support in navigating the very early start-up stage of farming,” says Alex Pulwicki, e-learning program manager for YA. “New and aspiring farmers need to gain both production and business skills to run a successful farm. You need to know how to grow a carrot or raise a cow but then you need to know how to sell it and manage the finances of your operation,” she says.
“We have people in our network who had the production skills, but did not know how to start a business and set it up in a way that minimized risk,” says Pulwicki. “The bootcamp was designed to walk people through the farm business start-up and build community with other new farmers.”
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