Step 1: Farm Goals and Resources

Brief

Author(s): Laura Lengnick

Organization: Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming

Planning Step: Goals and Resources

Step 1 Farm Goals and Resources guides you through Step 1 of the 5 Steps to Your Whole Farm Climate Resilience Plan. In step 1, you are invited to gather and summarize information about your farm including assets under management and farm goals using two well-established whole farm planning tools – the Holistic Goal and the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT analysis). The Holistic Goal is uniquely helpful to farm resilience planning because it it is the only farm goal setting tool that encourages taking a moment to step back and think carefully about how your farm can best support the health of the family, the land, and the community that is needed to sustain your farm operation over the long term. The SWOT analysis is particularly helpful to farm resilience planning because it is a one page snapshot of your current business position. You can use this snapshot to identify strenghts and opportunities that you can use to your advantage and the most important weaknesses and threats to address in your climate resilience plan. You will use the information summarized in this step to guide your selection of adaptation strategies in Step 3 and find “best fit” climate risk management practices for your farm in Step 4 of the 5 Steps to Your Whole Farm Climate Resilience Plan. You can use the Step 1 resources on this site to learn more about whole farm planning, how Holistic Management is different from traditional farm and ranch management, and to guide your work to create a Holistic Goal and SWOT for your farm.

Relevant Region(s): All | Farm Scale: All | Farm Type: All | Markets: All