Market research and environmental analysis
Market research means finding facts about buyers before you grow. Ask: Who will buy? What do they want, in what quantity, and at what price? Who else sells it (competitors)?
- Ways to research: short questions to neighbours, shop visits, price lists from the local market, online data.
- Environmental analysis looks at everything around the farm: natural (soil, water, climate), market (customers, competitors), rules (food safety, land use), technology (new tools) and people (skills, labour).
A handy tool is SWOT: our Strengths, Weaknesses, and outside Opportunities and Threats.
Farm start-up plans and marketing strategy
A start-up plan is a short written plan for the first season. Keep it to one or two pages.
- Goal: what to grow or make, how much, by when.
- Resources: land, water, tools, workers, and the money needed (start-up cost).
- Marketing strategy: the 4 Ps: product, price, place, promotion, for the customers you found in research.
- Money plan: expected income, expected cost, expected profit, and when cash comes in.
- Risks: bad weather, pests, price fall, and a back-up for each.
Start small. A small test shows what customers truly want before you spend a lot.
Practising and evaluating farm management
Now you do the plan: sow, tend, harvest, sell, and record everything: dates, quantities, costs, sales, customer comments.
Then evaluate: compare the goal with the result.
- Did we reach the quantity? The price? The profit?
- If not, why? Weather, cost too high, wrong crop, weak selling?
- What will we keep, change or stop?
Write the lessons down. The next plan starts from them. Evaluation is not blame; it is learning.
Key formulas and definitions
- Gap = goal − actual
- Expected profit = expected income − expected cost
- Cycle: Research → Plan → Do → Check → (repeat)
- SWOT = Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
Worked examples
1. Survey of 30 families: tomato 12, chilli 6, onion 12 families want to buy. Which is the most wanted? Which is tied?
Tomato and onion tie at 12. Use other facts (cost, soil, price) to choose between them.
2. Goal 500 kg sold; actual 420 kg. Find the gap and percent reached.
Gap = 500 − 420 = 80 kg. Reached = 420 ÷ 500 × 100 = 84%.
3. Plan: income 6000, cost 4500. Actual: income 5400, cost 4300. Compare profit.
Planned profit 1500; actual 1100. Gap 400. Income fell by 600 but cost fell by only 200.
4. SWOT for a farm near a city road: put 'easy access to buyers', 'dry summer', 'new local demand for organic food', 'big farm opens nearby' in S, W, O, T.
S: easy access to buyers. W: dry summer. O: new demand for organic. T: big farm nearby.
Common mistakes
- Growing first and asking buyers later.
- Writing a plan so long nobody reads it. Keep it short.
- Skipping records. Without notes the review has nothing to compare.
- Treating evaluation as blame instead of learning for next time.