Books

Building a Sustainable Business: A Guide to Developing a Business Plan for Farms and Rural Businesses brings the business planning process alive to help today's alternative and sustainable agriculture entrepreneurs transform farm-grown inspiration into profitable enterprises.

Building Soils for Better Crops is a one-of-a-kind, practical guide to ecological soil management, now expanded and in full color.

This guide lists funding opportunities offered by federal programs, and is indispensable for anyone seeking government help to foster their innovative enterprise in forestry and agriculture. Available only online.

Crop Rotation on Organic Farms: A Planning Manual provides an in-depth review of crop rotation, including how it improves soil quality and health and helps manage pests, diseases and weeds.

How to Direct Market Your Beef portrays how one couple used its family’s ranch to launch a profitable, grass-based beef operation focused on direct market sales.

How to Manage the Blue Orchard Bee explains how to use this alternative pollinator successfully, including nesting, rearing and wintering, how to manage predators, and more. Available only online.

Renowned experts' articles, essays and poems offering historical and contemporary Black perspectives on sustainable agriculture.

Local Harvest: A Multifarm CSA Handbook offers straightforward guidance on cooperative marketing, an innovative practice that is helping CSAs stay strong and viable over the long term.

While every farming system is unique, the principles of ecological pest management apply universally. Manage Insects on Your Farm highlights ecological strategies that improve your farm’s natural defenses and encourage beneficial insects to attack your worst pests.

Managing Alternative Pollinators: A Handbook for Beekeepers, Growers and Conservationists is a first-of-its-kind, step-by-step, full-color guide for rearing and managing bumble bees, mason bees, leafcutter bees and other bee species that provide pollination alternatives to the rapidly declining honey bee.

Managing Cover Crops Profitably explores how and why cover crops work and provides all the information needed to build cover crops into any farming operation.

Weed control demands time, labor and expense for every farmer every year. Steel in the Field shows how today's implements and techniques can control weeds while reducing—or eliminating—herbicides. Available only online.

This 16-page guide to sustainable agriculture-oriented educational opportunities for schoolchildren features more than 50 programs and curricula nationwide, updated in 2011. Available only online.

Ten Years of SARE showcases accomplishments of a unique USDA program that has made a difference in the lives of farmers and ranchers across the United States and Island Protectorates.
 

Hailing from small vegetable farms, cattle ranches and grain farms covering thousands of acres, the producers in The New American Farmer, 2nd edition have embraced new sustainable approaches to agriculture.

In one complete volume, this must-have resource for direct market producers covers the latest tips and trends from leading-edge sellers, managers and market planners all over the country.

This full-color book profiles 50 inspiring young people—one from every state—who are revitalizing rural America with new enterprises.