Hi everybody, just wanted to introduce myself for this set of threads. In addition to being a plant geek and author of various
permaculture books, I have some farm business
experience which is the main focus of this permies.com event. I ran a
seed company for several years. Today I am a self-employed
permaculture writer/presenter/consultant. I've also had several day jobs that related to farm business. At the New England Small Farm Institute I worked for many years with beginning farmers on all the non-sexy parts of farm start-up: financing, budgeting, researching legal requirements, market research, enterprise selection, and so on. Later I ran a farm incubator site for Nuestras Raices, where we provided training and rented small farm parcels to beginning farmers, mostly from immigrant and refugee backgrounds. As part of that effort I took 30 abandoned acres and turned them into a reasonably viable farm, sub-leased to 22 new farmers.
Permaculture has mostly been about the backyard scale until recently, at least in the US and Canada. Meeting the challenges of this century means we need a lot more permies on a lot more
land. Many farmers are already well into this process in the US and Canada (many more in Australia). To do this we have to learn how to play the game and succeed in business - or we won't get a chance to stay on the land for long. Regenerative enterprise planning and management are critical survival tools for us in this period - and few
people came to
permaculture because they are excited about bookkeeping and
marketing plans. Time to skill each other up!
Looking forward to the next few days.
Eric
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