Farm Small Farm Smart

Your customer probably isn't who you think it is. In the finale of the Who to Sell series, Diego names the "mission trap," building a farm around the people you most want to help, who may not want, value, or be able to afford what you grow, and lays out the sequence that actually works: build a profitable business first, then use it to expand your impact. Watch the episode here! Interested in watc...

In this episode, Dr. Paul Zorner of Locus Ag Solutions talks sheds light on how to go about populating soils with healthy microbes.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcast Netw...

There's a number most farmers never calculate: the minimum price you need just to break even. Diego walks through the math that separates small farms that survive from the ones that slowly bleed out: why wholesale is a volume game you were never set up to win, why direct-to-consumer is the only model that works at small scale, and why charging too little costs you in two directions at once.  Watch...

In this episode, Dr. Johannes Lehmann of Cornell University talks about where the long-term carbon stores in the soil actually come from.  Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcast...

Margin tells you how much to keep. Volume tells you how much to grow. But none of it matters without the right place to sell it. In part 3 of the Profit Pie series, we break down the four sales channels: farmers markets, CSAs, restaurants, and wholesale, and how to match the channel to what your farm actually needs, not just the one with the highest margin. Watch the episode here! Interested in wa...

In this episode, author and educator Peter McCoy of Mycologos discusses putting fungi into soil by building up the soil.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcast Network:   Carr...

In Part 1, we built the Profit Pie, the framework for how much you keep on every bed. Here's what it doesn't tell you: a 70% margin on a bed doesn't pay the rent. Margin is how much you keep per bed. Income is margin times volume. Get one wrong and the whole thing falls apart. Watch the episode here! Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to our YouTube Channel!   Subscribe for more conte...

In this episode, compost specialist and owner of Living Roots Compost Tea Troy Hinke breaks down the nuances of making and using compost tea depending on what you're growing and what your goals are.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   I...

Most entrepreneurs see growth as progress. What if the smartest move is to stop?  Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcast Network:   Carrot Cashflow   Farm Small Farm Smart   Far...

Ask most farmers what has the biggest effect on profit and they'll say inputs: seeds, soil, amendments, the stuff you put in the ground. They're wrong.  After a decade of interviews, here's the profit pie: every factor that touches your profit, ranked from biggest lever to smallest. Watch the episode here! Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to our YouTube Channel!   Subscribe for more...

In this episode, soil specialist and consultant Dr. Jim Hoorman of Hoorman Soil discusses farming within the bounds of the Conservation Reserve Program.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Moder...

Struggling founders: detailed plans slowly, never execute. Successful founders: Build basic version, get it to customers, learn what actually matters, iterate. Difference isn't intelligence — it's velocity. The main thing: Build product, get it to customers.  Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and suppl...

In this episode, Professor Emeritus at Cornell University College of Agricultural and Life Sciences breaks down what happens in a symbiotic relationship between trichoderma species and plant species.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram  ...

Do you know how much labor goes into growing that bed of lettuce? Not just the planting and harvesting, the weeding, the washing, the selling, too? If you don't know your numbers, you might be in danger of farming below minimum wage.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Fo...

Everybody fantasizes about being their own boss, but nobody fantasizes about standing in front of a field at 6 AM wondering if you made the right call, or about the part where you clean the toilets. After a decade interviewing farmers who made the jump from employee to owner, the same seven walls come up again and again. Watch the episode here! Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to ou...

In this episode, one of the pioneers of probiotic technology, Dr. Matthew Wood of Probiotic Holdings, sheds light on what efficient microbes are and what they do.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on...

While $20/tray of microgreens seems like a wildly profitable venture, do you know the kind of logistics, inputs, and labor that go into that $20 tray?  Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern G...

How many hours did you work on your farm last week? And the harder question: how many of those hours were spent running the business versus improving it? "Work on your business, not in your business" is in every business book ever written. Everybody nods, but almost nobody does it. Watch the episode here! Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to our YouTube Channel!   Subscribe for more...

In this episode, USDA soil scientist Dr. Kurt Spokas explains why not all biochar is exactly the same and why some are better than others.  Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcas...

With a solid crop selection, tight crop succession, and unwavering customer base, you can ABSOLUTELY run a profitable business on 1000sqft. of land.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Gr...

Your farm has a salary cap. Land and time are finite, and every crop you plant spends some of both. The question isn't "what makes me the most money," it's "what makes me the most money per day it occupies my bed." That's dollars per day (DPD), and after interviewing over 200 farmers, it's the number the highest earners track that struggling farms don't even know exists. Watch the episode here! In...

In this episode, Dr. David Laird of Iowa State University breaks down the most common beliefs around growing in clay soils.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcast Network:   C...

You can only grow so much by yourself. If you're planning on growing your business, you'll eventually need to hire out help.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcast Network:  ...

More than half of new farms fail in their first five years. In almost every case, it's not a growing problem...it's a money problem.  After a decade interviewing hundreds of farmers and running a farm supply business serving thousands of customers, the same financial mistakes show up again and again. Watch the episode here! Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to our YouTube Channel!   ...

In this episode, Dr. Jane Fife of 3Bar Biologics talks about how to multiply microbial populations and how different types may multiply better in different regions.   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies at Modern Grower. Follow Modern Grower:   Instagram   Instagram Listen to other podcasts...