Direct Marketing Strategies
Marketing & Branding Your Small Farm
Learn the importance of developing a brand for your farm and incorporate it into your marketing plan.
Marketing Your Small Farm
Finding and growing a customer base for your farm products is a never-ending challenge. Learning as much as possible about your potential customer’s lifestyles, needs, and desires can help you develop a product list destined to sell as well discovering the best ways to engage with that clientele.
Direct Market Strategies for Small Farms
Across the nation, there’s a growing movement of people wanting to know more about their food and how it is grown. In response to this trend, new and existing small acreage farms are hoping to provide a solution and capture some of this growing market. But as a new or evolving farm, how do you crack the code? Where do you find great customers, and more importantly, how do you keep them coming back?
Selling at a Farmers Market: Perfecting Your Booth
Assuming you are already bringing high-quality products to market, how can you entice shoppers to your booth? And once they enter your booth, how do you encourage them to buy from you? Learn the basics of creating an attractive booth that helps you sell.
Finding Land to Farm
Access to Farmland
One of the most common questions new and beginning farmers have focuses on finding land. With land values skyrocketing and the cost of purchase out of reach for many, there is a desperate need for alternatives.
Lease Literacy for Farmers & Farmland Owners
Leasing land for your farm is an economical way to start building farm skills, infrastructure, an enterprise mix, and develop a market. The benefits to not having a large capital investment in land can make a lot of sense, especially for those on a tight budget. But the pitfalls to renting farmland without a clearly written lease are many and often legendary. The days of the handshake deal, if there ever were any, are long gone. Both landlord and tenant are protected with a well-written lease that spells out the who/what/where/when details as much as possible.
Land Use Regulations
One of the first rude surprises many new and beginning farmers face are the myriad rules and regulations that govern what they can and cannot do on a specific piece of property. From floodplain rules that govern what, if any, structures are allowed and where they can be located to regulations covering where you can put a new driveway or even have public events, the number of rules and regulations affecting farmers can seem overwhelming. On top of that, simply determining whether you need to be talking with federal, state, or local county personnel on a particular land use topic can be more than a little confusing. While county rules will differ some depending on jurisdiction, there are strong similarities across the board no matter where you are in Washington State.
Washington Water Rights 101
Depending on where you are farming in Washington State, having legal access to water for irrigation and livestock can make or break an operation. And unlike many other parts of the US, the laws governing surface and groundwater usage in Washington are complex, fraught with challenges and confusion, and very often misunderstood.
Program Sponsor
We are grateful to the King Conservation District’s Regional Food System Program for their generous funding and support of the WSU On Demand video series. We hope you will find these resources of value as you build your own agricultural enterprise.
