Risk management is essentially the act of asking “What if?” and creating a plan for the resulting scenarios. While nobody wants to think about all the bad things that could happen, it’s the only way to protect your farm and your family. Risk areas include: production, marketing, financial, legal and human resources. We highly recommend reading the Guide to Managing Risk on Small Farms created by the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project. This is an easy to understand, concise and comprehensive document that both helps you identify your risk areas and helps you think through strategies to address them. It includes checklists and real life examples from small farms. One of the things you’ll see addressed a lot is insurance, and we have some specifics on that area in our Insurance section.
If you have specific risk management issues that are legal in nature, the Farm Commons is an organization and website that helps farmers with legal issues. There are a ton of resources on this page about everything from business structures to how to settle a dispute with a wholesale customer to labor law.
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