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The Urban Farmer: Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land, by Curtis Allen Stone
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Review
There are 40 million acres of lawns in North America. In their current form, these unproductive expanses of grass represent a significant financial and environmental cost. However, viewed through a different lens, they can also be seen as a tremendous source of opportunity. Access to land is a major barrier for many people who want to enter the agricultural sector, and urban and suburban yards have huge potential for would-be farmers wanting to become part of this growing movement.The Urban Farmer is a comprehensive, hands-on, practical manual to help you learn the techniques and business strategies you need to make a good living growing high-yield, high-value crops right in your own backyard (or someone else's). Major benefits include:Low capital investment and overhead costsReduced need for expensive infrastructureEasy access to markets.Growing food in the city means that fresh crops may travel only a few blocks from field to table, making this innovative approach the next logical step in the local food movement. Based on a scalable, easily reproduced business model, The Urban Farmer is your complete guide to minimizing risk and maximizing profit by using intensive production in small leased or borrowed spaces.
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"The Urban Farmer is simply the best guide out there for anyone wanting to grow vegetables for market. Chock full of practical information on costs, business planning, the best crops to grow, how much land to farm, growing techniques, and how to develop markets, this book covers it all. Curtis Stone shares his hard-won knowledge on setting up and succeeding at small-plot intensive (SPIN) farming in lively, easy-to-grasp prose, in all the detail you'll need to get started. Curtis not only tells us what works, he reveals, based on his own experience, what didn't work for him, and that alone is worth the price of the book. This is a comprehensive real-world manual from someone who's done it, and any market farmer will profit greatly from reading it."— Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia's Garden and The Permaculture City "I have no hesitation in saying that The Urban Farmer by Curtis Stone is one of the most important, and overdue, books on urban agriculture ever published. It is simultaneously deeply visionary and immensely practical, always a heady brew. It allows us to look at urban land in an entirely different way. If I were 18 again and given this book, it would put fire in my belly and set me on a career path that is cutting edge, deeply entrepreneurial and profoundly responsible. It deserves to be a best seller."— Rob Hopkins, Founder of the Transition movement and author of The Power of Just Doing Stuff. "Curtis Stone is at the forefront of a stirring revolution. Urban farming will change what local food means and I know of no other farmer that is as successful at it as he is. And the best part is his willingness to share what is a successful business model. If you're interested in learning to profitably start a farm on a shoestring budget, Curtis Stone is the go to guy."—Jean Martin Fortier, author of The Market Gardener "A first-rate, hands-on guide to successful and profitable farming on the very small scale, Curtis Stone's The Urban Farmer should be required reading for anyone who thinks that growing food requires hundreds of acres off in the countryside. Highly recommended."— John Michael Greer, author of Green Wizardry "Curtis Stone has artfully blended my three favorite things - entrepreneurship, independence and sustainable food production into one amazing book. He has also done so in a way that lowers the entry point for anyone who is truly motivated to no longer have any excuse for not getting started. To say I recommend this book highly is a gross understatement. I consider it required reading for anyone with a goal to start a business, not matter what niche they end up in." — Jack Spirko, TheSurvivalPodcast.com "If factory farms are not the solution to the biggest issue of our time - how to feed 9 billion people without cooking the planet - what can we do? Grow more food in the cities where we live. Urban agriculture is a tradition dating back thousands of years as well as an innovation reshaping modern city design. It's also a lure for a growing number of idealists drawn by a vision of reconnecting with the land while becoming part of the solution. But hold on. Anyone who's tried it as a business knows there's more to urban agriculture than romance. It takes hard work and common sense - two gifts Curtis Stone has in spades, and he's always been generous with sharing it. Local growers have appreciated the lectures and workshops where he spells out the dollars and sense behind growing city food. Now readers everywhere have the opportunity to tap into this valuable resource. If you're going to invest in your future as city food grower, start with a copy of The Urban Farmer." — David Tracey, author of Guerrilla Gardening and Urban Agriculture "This book is a treasure for anyone really serious about making a decent living off an urban farm. Back-to-the-lawn urban farming might look easy, but Curtis Stone shows exactly how that “ease†grows out of getting a thousand details right. They're all in this book, generously shared. This is not just a well-written business text, illustrating the myriad technical, entrepreneurial, marketing, accounting, farming and people skills Curtis developed to work smarter, not harder. It is even more a quintessential "how-to" manual, taking the reader step by step by step to the roots of running a profitable urban farm."— Peter Ladner, author of The Urban Food Revolution and a long-time urban food gardener
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Product details
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: New Society Publishers (December 29, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0865718016
ISBN-13: 978-0865718012
Product Dimensions:
7.5 x 0.8 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.8 out of 5 stars
227 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#20,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Curtis Stone succeeds extraordinarily well in the primary objective of this book. It is an attempt to tell the reader how to establish an urban farm. As the table of contents below indicates, he covers just about every aspect of the question. How to acquire the needed resources: urban land, primarily lawns and some equipment. He advises how to locate customers. He advises what crops to grow.The book is intensely practical. Although he is known as "the bike farmer" in this Canadian town where he lives, and thus might be taken for a counter-culture sort, he is very forthright in saying that this identity is a marketing tool. It identifies him to his customers, and a bicycle is the cheapest means of transportation. The book is relentlessly focused on the bottom line rather than being wedded to any idealistic principles. Farming is a business, and he tells you how to optimize every aspect of the operation to make it profitable.Obviously, locally grown organic food appeals to a well-defined sector of the population. Call them crunchy cons, yuppies, urban aesthetes, or whatever else, anybody familiar with the American or Canadian social scene will recognize his customer base. There are people who did not want mass-produced, mass marketed food, and are willing to pay a premium for fresh, pure, locally grown produce. Stone serves three sets of customers: local farmers' markets, Community Supported Agriculture, and restaurants. Community supported agriculture (CSA) are groups in the community that contract with a grower such as Stone to take produce over the course of a growing season or year. This provides a steady customer base and some predictability. The other outlets being more profitable, Stone devotes more space to describing how to establish oneself with farmers markets and restaurants.Stone starts with several key insights. The first is that there is a broad market in North America for the kind of high quality, organic produce he is able to grow. The second insight is that lawns are a vast underused resource. There are 40 million acres of lawn in America. They account for between 30 and 60 percent of urban water use, and take a lot of time and gasoline to mow. Moreover, homeowners often see them as a pain and bother. Many lawn owners are happy to allow an urban farmer to use the land in exchange for some produce. A third is that urban land is very close to the consumer. A crop can go from field to table in a day. A fourth insight is that cities have their own ecology. There are warmer and better protected from wind than rural farms. Stone's approach all of these advantages to form a profitable business.The most amazing observation I found in the book is how little land it takes to succeed in urban farming. A half-acre is the greatest area he discusses in the book. Even that small amount, he observes, requires hired help according to his system. Observe that quarter acre lots are extremely common in the suburbs, and you can conclude that it is not difficult to satisfy the land requirements.Going to the bottom line, Stone writes about generating incomes in the five figure range, comparable with teachers and other professionals who will be among his customers. I will venture some observations that Stone only implies. A five figure income to an urban farmer is a lot more than it is to a teacher. The urban farmer doesn't need to spend a lot of money on clothes, a car to get to and from work, and the other trappings of a professional life. Being reliant on a bicycle (perhaps battery assisted, to pull around a Rototiller on a trailer) is an immediate money saver. A social life is built-in to an urban farmer's life. He is in constant contact with neighbors, chefs, customers in the farmers' market. Stone writes that he is often called upon to speak to community organizations. In the words of Nicholas Nassim Taleb he is "anti-fragile." He can handle customers coming and going, and he does not have a foundation of debt to be serviced. In fact, Stone is rather adamant on the subject of debt: don't use it.There is a lot of value in the book even to somebody who does not want to implement Stone's model. I live on a third of an acre in Kyiv, Ukraine. We do not have much of the yuppie restaurant market here. You could never get seven dollars a pound for fresh spinach – one or two is more like it. However, the book will be useful to me in planning how to lay out our garden plots, how to use plastic tunnels to extend the growing season, how to control pests and weeds, and how to decide what to plant. I would recommend it to almost any gardener. Stone's bottom line perspective is useful even if you are only deciding what to grow for your own use.Stone writes about the qualities one looks for in an employee "Paying for labor is worth it only if it allows you to do tasks that cannot be delegated as easily." He comes across as a fair boss, but not one who is in any way committed to socialist notions. Using an employee is a business decision. If they don't contribute to the bottom line, you don't need them.An assessment of the capital that Stone himself brings to the business is illuminating. In terms of financial capital he is talking about $10,000, give or take. In terms of the human capital that he himself evidently brings, it includes yeoman farmer attributes that we would all like to impute to our ancestors, but we have to observe are rather rare today. Here is the human capital that Stone himself appears to possess:• An innate sense of entrepreneurship. He looks for opportunities, and assesses each situation in terms of possible benefit.• Hard work. Stone finds what he is doing interesting and is willing to put the time and to make it successful.• Facility with tools. Like any farmer, Stone has to invent, construct, repair, and jury-rig equipment to get the job done.• Gregariousness. Throughout Stone's day he comes in contact with many, many potential customers, and has the patience and the graciousness to talk with all of them.• Fairness. He does what it takes to be fair to customers, employees, and all around him.• Curiosity. Stone acquires the knowledge he shares in this book by talking to people, reading, and tinkering and figuring things out.• Facility with numbers. Stone describes how he uses spreadsheets extensively to plan his operations and record his outcomes.• Facility with language. He is in constant communication.• Facility with computers and technology. This is essential to support work with numbers and language in today's world.Stone's background prior to farming would not at first appear promising. He concluded after a decade and a half as a rock musician that that was not going to be his profession, so he looked for something he could do. He credits his father with an entrepreneurial streak that the son seems to have inherited. So, on the one hand, he started from nothing: no education in farming, no real experience, and precious little capital. On the other hand, in terms of human capital he was extremely well endowed. He had what it took to succeed.Stone's story is a parable for Millennial youth. These kids emerge from the University chock-full of formal education but with no practical experience, and quite specifically, little notion of the fact that one earns a living by providing the kinds of goods and services that people are willing to pay for. What a blessing it would be to a 16-year-old with no discernible direction in life to get involved in something like urban farming and learn the self-discipline and the talents required to make a success of this fairly basic undertaking. It would prepare one for life. In our yeoman farmer ancestors, such an understanding of how things work was implicit. Stone provides a recipe for going back to these fundamental values.It is a five-star effort all around. The table of contents below gives you an idea of the breadth and depth of the book.Contents--- A Farm in the City1. Why Urban Farming?2. Connecting the Dots: An Urban Farmer’s Place in the Community3. Quick Breakdown of Economics--- A Viable Farming Business On ½ Acre Or Less4. The Zones of Your Farm and Your Life5. Crops Better Suited for the City6. Introduction to Urban Infrastructure7. Start-Up Farm Models--- The Business of Urban Farming8. Starting Small9. Market Streams10. Working with Chefs11. Labor12. Software and Organization13. Self-Promotion14. Finance Options--- Finding the Right Site15. Scouting for Land16. Urban, Suburban and Peri-Urban Land17. Multiple or Single-Plot Farming18. Urban Soil19. Land Agreements and Leases20. Urban Pests--- Building Your Farm, One Site at a Time21. Turning a Lawn Into a Farm Plot22. Choosing A Site23. Garden Layout24. The Perimeter25. Irrigation 6 Infrastructure and Equipment26. Base of Operations27. Tools28. Special Growing Areas29. Inexpensive Season Extension30. Transportation--- Operations31. Work Smarter not Harder32. Harvesting33. Post-Harvest Processing34. Portioning and Packing--- Production Systems35. Beds for Production36. Planting37. Microgreens38. Extending the Season--- Basic Crop Planning39. Determine Your Outcome40. The Base Plan--- Crops for the Urban Farmer41. Parting Words
I bought this book for my husbands mid life crisis. Some men but fancy cars but mine buys a farm. All jokes aside this book is extremely informative. It has reassured my husband that he is on the right path to becoming an urban farmer with a profitable market farm. This book tell you what to grow/not to grow & why. How to maximize small spaces because it's not alway the size that matters 😉 I to plan on reading it as soon as I can pry it from my hubbys fingers. Great buy.
Curtis Stone is an outstanding, high-energy, and enthusiastic proponent of urban farming.Living in the sticks, I'm inspired to up my game in my small garden plot. I'll obviously deviate from his selection of veggies as he's focusing on the local market while I'll be looking at my family's needs, but I'll also incorporate some of his plantings to take to local outlets as some cash income.Don't overlook his YouTube videos - they provide a lot of enthusiasm and energy, and a good physical look at what he's doing.The book I'm using more as a reference: How much of this to plant in a bed? How close to plant? Specifically what steps is Curtis following in this process? How is that vegetable spelled? How to keep track of the business - planting and harvesting information, watching my business (cash flow vs. crop availability), and other technical things to help me run a tighter ship.Other resources that make great companion books include Elliot Coleman (Maine) and J. M. Fortier (Quebec).
I love listening to Curtis Stone speak and I think the book could be very useful for some. I personally was looking more for growing insight and methods which I didn't get much of. I've been gardening for years but still have so much to learn. Decent blue print just lacking in details in my opinion. Read it, but unless you are specifically looking to rent/borrow land in an urban setting I wouldn't make it my first read.
I bought this book simply to gain ideas and to simply understand the modern market garden concept. in that regard it has exceeded my expectations. If you plan to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Stone, I would recommend you to check out his YouTube Channel as a companion to this book.
We recently built a hoop house and have future plans of selling produce. We aren't raking in the $ yet as we're just getting started with feeding our own family with our home grown goods, but if we ever decide to do sell produce, I can thank Curtis Stone for writing this book. He lays everything out and I mean EVERYTHING. Curtis isn't keeping any secrets to himself. He seems to be very concerned about food production or processing and wants everyone to grow their own food. He lays out all the steps and things to think about when selling produce. It's an educational and fantastic and easy read. He's also got YouTube videos you should check out. I love this guy. I made my husband and kids watch the videos and now one of our kids is interested in growing her own food to sell and got herself her own little greenhouse.
Covers the subject matter pretty comprehensively, and is written by a man who really wants to share his knowledge. The lifestyle however is not for the faint hearted. I suspect Curtis Allen Stone operates most of his life in overdrive. All credit to him.
What can I say? I am a Curtis Stone fanboy. Got a mancrush going. I have taken up the micro-farm mantel thanks to him. I'm not doing exactly what he is, but I am growing things for sale. Watch the YouTube videos, buy the book. You too can get your asterisk free from your "job" and make a life. Seriously, you are not going to do this with no money, but you can do it for rather cheap to start.In our "disposable plastic" world there are all the containers you need to start seedlings. If you are making compost, (and you should be), you can have all that is needed for production. Where you will have to spend some money is in crop covers and post production (packaging). Get off your asterisk and go do it. Life is not a dress rehearsal.
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