Building and sustaining

Why Farm Viability?

Oregon Tilth understands that to build a better food system, we need farms that are biologically sound, socially equitable AND economically viable. There is much work to do on this front. Our education efforts focus on empowering farmers with the business acumen to run more viable businesses while remaining firmly rooted in triple bottomline business principles. We also work to build a support network for farmers by creating opportunities for agricultural service providers to develop their skills as farm viability professionals.

Programming and Partnerships

We work in partnership with Oregon State University’s Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems (CFSFCS) to develop and deliver innovative tools and trainings that support farmers with making more informed business decision. Together we developed Know Your Cost To Grow, an online program designed to support multi-crop vegetable farmers with determining their crop-specific costs of production and a framework for using cost of production to increase farm profitability. Learn more about the program from this video, featuring farmers that participated in a hybrid version of Know Your Cost To Grow offered through a collaboration with Oahu RC&D’s Hawaii Women Farmer’s Network in 2021-2022.

Business Technical Assistance Direct to Farmers

We partnered with Viva Farms to offer business technical assistance to farmers in their Farm Business Incubator program. We developed a menu of business management practices including cash flow analysis, sales and operational planning, cost of production analysis, market channel analysis and investment analysis with clearly defined the steps for implementing each practice.

This menu was offered to Viva producers, and we worked with them on identifying the costs of selling and distribution for each channel, analyzing equipment investments and more.