Are You An Owner of Monsanto?

Courtesy of Greenpeace.
 
When we saw the movie Food Inc. at a small, nearby theater a couple years ago it really had a profound impact on us. This was around the same time we started “going organic” in our produce choices and Food Inc. helped to push us over the edge when it came to meats, dairy products, etc. What struck me as totally missing from Food Inc. was any discussion on how these massive food conglomerates continue to finance their operations and what you can do to make sure you aren’t a part of it. All of this talk about boycotting the industrialized food system with no focus on what keeps the wheels turning: MONEY
 
What most people don’t realize is that all of these big ag companies are “public”, which means you can buy and sell shares of their stock on a stock market exchange. If you have a diversified 401K or stock portfolio you may be inadvertently contributing to the success of the very firms you’ve chosen not to support.
 
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Farm Flows - Leveraging Your Fixed Costs

 
I think a lot about how we’ll manage the cash flows at Little Seed during the first few years of operation. It’s an extremely important topic because it can literally make or break your business... no matter how well you appear to be doing. Fast growing, seemingly profitable companies go under all the time and the culprit is typically poor cash flow management. One way to prepare for (and hopefully avoid) that unfortunate circumstance is to understand your fixed and variable costs. In this post I’ll cover what that means and how it can impact your business and in a later post I’ll expand into how it applies to various circumstances (debt load, working capital needs, etc).
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Work-Life Balance? Isn’t That Why We’re Starting a Farm?

 
Over the past year we’ve spent a lot of time reading books and chatting with farmers of all shapes and sizes. Veteran farmers, young farmers, former farmers, aspiring farmers, urban farmers... if it ends with farmer we’ve found someone to tell us about it! Aspiring farmers, including ourselves, tend to have a romantic view of life on the farm. We may tell you that we understand it's hard work, but no matter how many farms we visit and how many farmers we speak with I still can’t get that image out of my head.
 
Part of it is because when we visit and work on farms we don’t really get to see the most difficult aspects of farm life. We’re agri-tourists. At the end of the trip we get to
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