What does a REAL Market Gardening Business Plan look like?

My two-page market gardening business plan template

A market gardening business plan is absolutely necessary, if you are seriously thinking about making money from your garden. You're business plan will help you figure out if your garden will pay you back for your time and effort expended. And it is a must-do if you are looking for financing to start a market garden.

What goes into your business plan? While different financial institutions may have different formats they expect to see in a business plan, here's how we built the New Terra Farm business plan.

The Mini-Farm Plan from New Terra Farm

Get my FREE One-Acre Farm Plan and learn how to raise pigs, chickens and more, integrated with an organic market garden, to make more money from your small property.

Imagine building a profitable and sustainable mini-farm even on a small piece of land.

Components of the New Terra Farm Market Gardening Business Plan

We wrote the New Terra Farm market gardening business plan both to clarify our business goals and objectives for the farm, and also to satisfy the requirements of potential investors. Here's what's in it:

1. Background
   This section introduces the plan, and explains the origin of the business idea i.e. the 'how' and 'why' you decided to start a market garden.
2. The Team
   Here's where you identify all the players in your start-up market garden, and give their relevant background. You want to demonstrate that you have the necessary personnel resources to carry out your plan.
   
   Explain how this team has acquired or will acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to run your market garden business. Your team may also include partners or advisers whose experience you can use to supplement your skill set; e.g. you nay have a neighbour who is an experienced market grower, and can provide advice.
3. Growth Objectives
   This section explains how big you plan to grow the business over the next five years. This is generally explained in terms of how many customers you plan to acquire and/or how much revenue you expect to generate over the period. This will be explained in more detail in the Cash Flow Projections late in the market gardening business plan
4. The Marketing Plan
   This section details how, where and to whom you will sell your market garden goodies. Your plan might include sales to restaurants, at a farmer's market, or through a Community Supported Agriculture program
   
   You need to explain the system you will use to contact and 'make the sale' to each of these potential markets. If you are planning to sell at a farmer's market, contact the market to make sure they have a spot and to find out market rules.
   
   With restaurant sales you will want to talk to the owners or head chefs to find out what they might buy from you. Do this well in advance of the season, so you can adjust your growing plans if required.
   
   The CSA program is the easiest to document a revenue and marketing plan for; once you have set an income target and a price per share, you just need a likely pool of prospects and a way to contact them. See Market Gardening Marketing for more about marketing a CSA program.
5. Success factors
   In this section you explain the internal and external factors that will contribute to your success. This includes identifying your competitors, and any competitive advantage you may have over them - e.g. superior skills or knowledge, or unique access to a market.
   
   You will also want to demonstrate the growth potential in your area for your type of product. For example, here's a quote from the New Terra Farm business plan:
   
   "Current statistics indicate that 55% of consumers try organic food at least some of the time; the market in North America is growing by 20% annually."
6. Risk Management
   Identify and explain how you plan to manage the risks of starting your market garden. This includes both production risks - e.g. what steps are you planning to manage and protect your market garden from drought, flood, bugs, wild dingoes, etc - and business risks e.g. low sales, or the loss of key customers. You need a contingency plan to deal with these eventualities. You can read more about farm risk management here.
   
7. Cash Flow Projections
   This section contains projected income and expenses for the next 5-year period. Cash flow is driven by your marketing and business expansion plans, and has to make sense in terms of the rest of the plan. We developed a Budget and Cash Flow Planner spreadsheet to help us with that.
   
   You will need to 'play around' with income and expense figures to get a projection that makes sense (and makes a profit!). You can see more about this here Farm Income Planning
   

SCORE is a network of volunteer, expert business mentors  with the mission of helping small businesses get off the ground, grow and achieve their goals.

In addition to providing free business education and mentoring, they also make a number of useful forms and documents available on their website.

You can download a very thorough business plan template (35 pages) that includes directions and guidance for crafting your own business plan.

You can get it here

Free 2-Page Business Plan Template

Farm business plan template

"A dream without a plan is just a wish"

If you aren't planning for success, what ARE you planning for? Download my free 2-page business plan template and get methodical about your business success. 

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