Flower Farming for Profit: The Complete Guide to Growing a Successful Cut Flower Business - Paperback

by Lennie Larkin (Author)

"Flower Farming for Profit does a deep dive into the least glamorous, but most important part of farming--how to run a profitable business. This must-have book is incredibly thoughtful, well organized, and brimming with real-life examples. Lennie's down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach to the numbers is a breath of fresh air."--Erin Benzakein, owner, Floret Farm; New York Times bestselling author of Floret Farm's A Year in Flowers

With practical, step-by-step instructions and on-the-ground examples at every scale, Flower Farming for Profit is a comprehensive, beautiful guide to achieving profitability as a cut flower farmer.

When Lennie Larkin set out to become a flower farmer, she found all sorts of resources about growing flowers but a scarcity of reliable information on how to build a profitable cut flower business. How do you create efficient systems and adequately value your own time and effort through your pricing? When and how should you consider scaling up your farm? How can you make doing what you love support you financially?

In Flower Farming for Profit, Larkin answers these questions--and many, many more. With instructive lessons and savvy business tips from her own and other successful farms around the world, she explores:

• The diverse challenges of both wholesale and retail sales channels, from florists and farm stands to farmers markets
• Streamlining weddings for the farmer-florist, from communications to floral design
• Efficient recordkeeping and bookkeeping
• Steps for conducting your own cost-of-production analysis
• Marketing and growth strategies
• Business planning, goal setting, and making financial projections
• Crop planning based on local climatic conditions, market demand, and sales projections

The cut flower industry continues to experience wild growth. To successfully do what they love while expanding the market for sustainably produced flowers, new and experienced farmers alike must deliberately step back from the field and into the office. Flower Farming for Profit is a one-of-a-kind guide to creating the type of numbers-driven business that will allow individual farms to prosper and local flower economies to thrive.

Author Biography

Lennie Larkin started B-Side Farm in Sonoma County, California, in 2014, and has since moved the farm and settled on two beautiful acres outside of Portland, Oregon. B-Side has grown flowers for all kinds of retail and wholesale customers over the years and designed for hundreds of weddings. Lennie's true passion lies not only in tending to her own farm but in helping other farmers thrive in their businesses. She has been an associate faculty member at Santa Rosa Junior College and served multiple terms on the board of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. She is a vocal cheerleader for other growers and is known for advocating the value of business skills--the nuts and bolts that make this beautiful life of cultivating flowers possible. Through her research and educational business, Flower Farming for Profit, she teaches a business curriculum that she developed specifically for flower farmers, provides coaching and business advising, and conducts grant-funded research on cut flower cost of production and efficiency.

Lennie has developed an online course in profitable flower farming, which can be found at www.flowerfarmingforprofit.com/courses.