Customer Reviews

Booker T. Whatley's Handbook on How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres: With Special Plans for Prospering on 10 to 200 Acres

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mr. Whatley's book contains excellent, practical advice for starting a small-scale farm while stacking the odds in your favor. He correctly advocates that the future of farming isn't in the government, Del Monte (et al) or thousand-acre megafarms but in small operations providing specialized crops & meat to selective clientele. Though somewhat dated in pricing, the advice is still valid fourteen years after printing. Once I get mine up & running, I let you know more.

After reading Mr. Whatley's book, I want to give up what I'm doing and starting up a clientele membership club farm. If more farmers would diversify in Whatley's style, I believe the state of America's farm community would be much better. Good practical advice, if a bit outdated, from all aspects of starting, running and capitalizing on a farm business

A must read for anyone thinking of making money on small acreage. Great detail and full of how to drawings and practical advise. As a small farmer I learned a lot from one of the gurus of small farming.

The ideas in this book are most useable. Market Gardeners can get honest solutions to problems they are facing by reading this book.

Title says it all this book is just a compilation of articles taken from a very old publication and put together in order to sell a book that is mostly worthless now.

If you are looking to this one book alone to be your answer on how to leave the corporate grind and make a prosperous living in the country, you will be disappointed. If you are the type who read a lot and glean a little bit here and there - then this book is worth the read as it's full of a number of different ideas.

Booker presents this thesis that the future of farming is not with "get big or get out", but instead "stay small, get focused, go direct to the customer". His main theme is the creation of a "members only" farm co-op, where the people come to you (transportation), they pick the produce (labor, sorting, grading), and pay at check out (pricing). It's pick-your-own, but a members-only pick-your-own with an annual fee.

Once Booker lays out his thesis and support of why it would work, the rest of the book are stories from other farmers who are using similar methods that fit to support Booker's idea. While it's impossible for one farm to be all of these at the same time, there are a number of ideas presented here to at least get the brain thinking creatively with regards to farming and business that is different than simply large scale mono cropping and the assumed debt.