The Lean Farm

The Lean Farm PDF Author: Ben Hartman
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603585923
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
A practical, systems-based approach for a more sustainable farming operation To many people today, using the words "factory" and "farm" in the same sentence is nothing short of sacrilege. In many cases, though, the same sound business practices apply whether you are producing cars or carrots. Author Ben Hartman and other young farmers are increasingly finding that incorporating the best new ideas from business into their farming can drastically cut their wastes and increase their profits, making their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable. By explaining the lean system for identifying and eliminating waste and introducing efficiency in every aspect of the farm operation, The Lean Farm makes the case that small-scale farming can be an attractive career option for young people who are interested in growing food for their community. Working smarter, not harder, also prevents the kind of burnout that start-up farmers often encounter in the face of long, hard, backbreaking labor. Lean principles grew out of the Japanese automotive industry, but they are now being followed on progressive farms around the world. Using examples from his own family's one-acre community-supported farm in Indiana, Hartman clearly instructs other small farmers in how to incorporate lean practices in each step of their production chain, from starting a farm and harvesting crops to training employees and selling goods. While the intended audience for this book is small-scale farmers who are part of the growing local food movement, Hartman's prescriptions for high-value, low-cost production apply to farms and businesses of almost any size or scale that hope to harness the power of lean in their production processes.

The Lean Farm

The Lean Farm PDF Author: Ben Hartman
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603585923
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
A practical, systems-based approach for a more sustainable farming operation To many people today, using the words "factory" and "farm" in the same sentence is nothing short of sacrilege. In many cases, though, the same sound business practices apply whether you are producing cars or carrots. Author Ben Hartman and other young farmers are increasingly finding that incorporating the best new ideas from business into their farming can drastically cut their wastes and increase their profits, making their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable. By explaining the lean system for identifying and eliminating waste and introducing efficiency in every aspect of the farm operation, The Lean Farm makes the case that small-scale farming can be an attractive career option for young people who are interested in growing food for their community. Working smarter, not harder, also prevents the kind of burnout that start-up farmers often encounter in the face of long, hard, backbreaking labor. Lean principles grew out of the Japanese automotive industry, but they are now being followed on progressive farms around the world. Using examples from his own family's one-acre community-supported farm in Indiana, Hartman clearly instructs other small farmers in how to incorporate lean practices in each step of their production chain, from starting a farm and harvesting crops to training employees and selling goods. While the intended audience for this book is small-scale farmers who are part of the growing local food movement, Hartman's prescriptions for high-value, low-cost production apply to farms and businesses of almost any size or scale that hope to harness the power of lean in their production processes.

The Lean Dairy Farm

The Lean Dairy Farm PDF Author: Jana Hocken
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0730368424
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Make your farm better, smarter, and more productive The Lean method is revolutionising farming globally with its proven approach for reducing waste, improving productivity and sustaining profits.In The Lean Dairy Farm, dairy farmer and Lean consultant Jana Hocken explains why this approach is essential to every dairy farm and how to apply these tools, practices and principles to your dairy operation. The Lean Dairy Farm helps reduce the common problems and stressors faced by farmers every day: long work hours, high staff turnovers, repeat problems, breakdowns, wastage, safety and high costs. Using her own family’s dairy farm as a case study, Jana provides insight into how the Lean approach applies to farming, introduces practical tools to help you improve efficiency and reduce waste, and shows you how to create a farm culture that supports Lean thinking. Even if Lean is entirely new to you, this book offers a simple blueprint for applying its principles and practices to improve your farm. Quickly make use of basic Lean concepts on your farm Identify and eliminate waste in farm processes Organise your farm effectively to improve productivity Standardise your processes to do everything right the first time Develop an engaged, high performing team If you want a more efficient, profitable and robust dairy farm, The Lean Dairy Farm is for you.

Larding the Lean Earth

Larding the Lean Earth PDF Author: Steven Stoll
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1466805625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
A major history of early Americans' ideas about conservation Fifty years after the American Revolution, the yeoman farmers who made up a large part of the new country's voters faced a crisis. The very soil of American farms seemed to be failing, and agricultural prosperity, upon which the Republic was founded, was threatened. Steven Stoll's passionate and brilliantly argued book explores the tempestuous debates that erupted between "improvers," who believed in practices that sustained and bettered the soil of existing farms, and "emigrants," who thought it was wiser and more "American" to move westward as the soil gave out. Stoll examines the dozens of journals, from New York to Virginia, that gave voice to the improvers' cause. He also focuses especially on two groups of farmers, in Pennsylvania and South Carolina. He analyzes the similarities and differences in their farming habits in order to illustrate larger regional concerns about the "new husbandry" in free and slave states. Farming has always been the human activity that most disrupts nature, for good or ill. The decisions these early Americans made about how to farm not only expressed their political and social faith, but also influenced American attitudes about the environment for decades to come. Larding the Lean Earth is a signal work of environmental history and an original contribution to the study of antebellum America.

Lean in Agriculture

Lean in Agriculture PDF Author: Vibeke Fladkjaer Nielsen
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 0429455003
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Responding to a recent surge in interest and application, this book is the first to comprehensively address how Lean thinking and tools can be implemented in agriculture and agribusiness. This tactical guide breaks down barriers, clearly depicting how improvement techniques originally developed for factories can derive the same powerful results on farms. Expert Lean farming consultants, Susanne Pejstrup and Vibeke Fladkjaer Nielsen, present these methods in a clear, easy-to-read style, accessible to farmers all over the world. Case studies from multiple farm types – including crops, pigs and dairy cattle – demonstrate how respect for people, continuous improvement, and visual management techniques can improve resilience and profitability on the farm. Richly illustrated, Lean in Agriculture appeals not only to farmers, but to farm workers, food processing companies, veterinarians, consultants and other stakeholders in the agribusiness sector. Key Features: Translates Lean thinking into agricultural terms. Takes a people-centric approach to a Lean agricultural production system. Serves as an implementation guide , with clear writing and concise, easy-to-follow instructions tailored to the agricultural sector. Illustrates agriculture-specific Lean implementation with a wide range of case studies and memorable images.

Farming While Black

Farming While Black PDF Author: Leah Penniman
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603587616
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Farming While Black is the first comprehensive "how to" guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latino Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color. Farming While Black organizes and expands upon the curriculum of the BLFI to provide readers with a concise guide to all aspects of small-scale farming, from business planning to preserving the harvest. Throughout the chapters Penniman uplifts the wisdom of the African diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described--from whole farm planning, soil fertility, seed selection, and agroecology, to using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, sharing stories of ancestors, and tools for healing from the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation on the land. Woven throughout the book is the story of Soul Fire Farm, a national leader in the food justice movement.--AMAZON.

Sustainable Market Farming

Sustainable Market Farming PDF Author: Pam Dawling
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1550925121
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
Growing for 100 - the complete year-round guide for the small-scale market grower. Across North America, an agricultural renaissance is unfolding. A growing number of market gardeners are emerging to feed our appetite for organic, regional produce. But most of the available resources on food production are aimed at the backyard or hobby gardener who wants to supplement their family's diet with a few homegrown fruits and vegetables. Targeted at serious growers in every climate zone, Sustainable Market Farming is a comprehensive manual for small-scale farmers raising organic crops sustainably on a few acres. Informed by the author's extensive experience growing a wide variety of fresh, organic vegetables and fruit to feed the approximately one hundred members of Twin Oaks Community in central Virginia, this practical guide provides: Detailed profiles of a full range of crops, addressing sowing, cultivation, rotation, succession, common pests and diseases, and harvest and storage Information about new, efficient techniques, season extension, and disease resistant varieties Farm-specific business skills to help ensure a successful, profitable enterprise Whether you are a beginning market grower or an established enterprise seeking to improve your skills, Sustainable Market Farming is an invaluable resource and a timely book for the maturing local agriculture movement.

Lean Management System LMS:2012

Lean Management System LMS:2012 PDF Author: William A. Levinson
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1466505389
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
The success of a Lean manufacturing program depends far more on organization-wide leverage of Lean manufacturing tools than it does on the tools themselves. To this the organization must add the human relations aspects that earn buy-in and engagement by all members of the workforce, to the extent that workers will react immediately and decisively to the presence of waste. The synergy of the human and technological aspects of Lean form what Henry Ford called a universal code for the achievement of world-class results in any enterprise, and which he put into practice to deliver unprecedented bottom line results. This book expands upon and systemizes this universal code into a structure or framework that promotes organizational self-audits and continuous improvement. The book's first section offers a foundation of four simple but comprehensive Lean key performance indicators (KPIs): waste of the time of things (as in cycle time), waste of the time of people, waste of energy, and waste of materials. The Toyota Production System's seven wastes are all measurable in terms of these four KPIs, which also cover the key metrics of Eliyahu Goldratt's theory of constraints: throughput, inventory, and operating expense. The first section then adds a proactive improvement cycle that sets out to look for trouble by isolating processes for analytical purposes and measuring and then balancing inputs and outputs to force all wastes to become visible. It is in fact technically impossible for any waste of material or energy to hide from what chemical engineers call a material and energy balance. Application of this book's content should therefore satisfy most provisions of the ISO 14001 environmental management system standard and the new ISO 50001 energy management system standard. The second section consists of an unofficial (and therefore customizable) standard against which the organization

Whole-Farm Planning

Whole-Farm Planning PDF Author: Elizabeth Henderson
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603583564
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
Why do whole-farming planning? What makes it more effective than other ways of managing farms? The answers to these questions lie in a quiet rediscovery through science that is fundamentally changing the way modern humans see and must manage the world. The goal of this whole-farm planning manual is to reintroduce a macroscopic method of making and testing decisions on the farm and in larger wholes in which we live. This NOFA guide has information on: Lessons from systems science (including tools) Assessing the whole farm (what are we managing? the people, physical and mental assets, money) Understanding the farm ecosystems (the water and mineral cycles, dynamics of the biological community, the energy flow) Choosing appropriate tools Making a framework to test decisions Including examples and statements from practicing farmers, and more holistic resources and alternative business models.

Creating a Lean and Green Business System

Creating a Lean and Green Business System PDF Author: Keivan Zokaei
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1466571136
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Things that are good for the planet are also good for business. Numerous studies from the likes of the Economist Intelligence Unit, Harvard, MIT Sloan, and others indicate that organizations that commit to goals of zero waste, zero harmful emissions, and zero use of nonrenewable resources clearly outperform their competition.Like lean thinking, gre

Bet the Farm

Bet the Farm PDF Author: Beth Hoffman
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 164283159X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
"Eloquent and detailed...It's hard to have hope, but the organized observations and plans of Hoffman and people like her give me some. Read her book -- and listen." -- Jane Smiley, The Washington Post In her late 40s, Beth Hoffman decided to upend her comfortable life as a professor and journalist to move to her husband's family ranch in Iowa--all for the dream of becoming a farmer. There was just one problem: money. Half of America's two million farms made less than $300 in 2019, and many struggle just to stay afloat. Bet the Farm chronicles this struggle through Beth's eyes. She must contend with her father-in-law, who is reluctant to hand over control of the land. Growing oats is good for the environment but ends up being very bad for the wallet. And finding somewhere, in the midst of COVID-19, to slaughter grass finished beef is a nightmare. If Beth can't make it, how can farmers who confront racism, lack access to land, or don't have other jobs to fall back on hack it? Bet the Farm is a first-hand account of the perils of farming today and a personal exploration of more just and sustainable ways of producing food.