It seems like simple common sense. If you are planning to start a new business, you should know your product, know its market potential, know your customers and know your banker.
Perhaps most importantly, know yourself. Do you really have the will, stamina, resources and stubborn streak needed to stick with the project through the inevitable low points?
The answers may be common sense but they are also lessons that increasing numbers of prairie farmers are rediscovering as they branch out from producing raw commodities to developing value-added products.
In this special report, Calgary-based correspondent Barbara Duckworth looks at some of the valleys and hills on the road to value-added diversification.
