Farm Business Technical Assistance
2025 NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan
The Farm Business Technical Assistance brief explores the business and financial advising services available to farmers and other assistance that supports the viability of their farm business. This Issue brief is one of 27 briefs created as part of the NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan.
What's at Stake?
Family farms are a cornerstone of New Hampshire culture; they protect open spaces, contribute to environmental health, serve as a major attraction for tourists, and support numerous business sectors throughout the food chain.
Yet, New Hampshire’s farms face many obstacles that threaten their viability. Grocery stores often sell food at prices below the local cost of production. The increased costs of labor, equipment, and other inputs continue to deteriorate farm profitability and expanding regulations further challenge producers. Farm business management requires complex knowledge and skill sets that reach across the legal, tax, finance, and human resource fields. Providing technical assistance in these areas is critical to the success of New Hampshire’s farming community.
Current Conditions
There were 3,949 farms in New Hampshire in 20221 and 92% of those farms sold less than $100,000 in goods and services.2 Sustaining economically viable farms requires farmers to be supported by skilled business advisors. Farms at varying stages of development, scale, and commodity areas have differing needs; smaller, lower-grossing farms often need assistance in understanding how to develop profitable operations, while more complex, higher-grossing operations often need assistance with management systems that support their complexity.
Due to the confidentiality and risk associated with business management, farmers often seek to work with people with whom they have forged trusting relationships. This exacerbates the current shortage of technical assistance providers, as new professionals often lack those relationships. Additionally, both public and private sector organizations report difficulty hiring skilled farm business professionals due to fewer university programs offering courses in that area, an increase in retirements since 2020, a lack of funding, and non-competitive wages.
Current technical assistance services struggle to reach BIPOC and LGBTQ+ farmer communities. Furthermore, historically underserved farmers have identified the need for technical assistance from service providers who represent their communities and understand their unique practices and challenges.3,4 Building capacity to meet these needs has become another part of the equation.
Challenges
> Farmers often identify a lack of desire to learn and work on record keeping, finances, legal compliance, and tax planning.
> The complexity of these farm business topics make it difficult to strengthen the skills of farmers and technical service providers alike.
> Fees for private sector technical service providers are often financially inaccessible to farmers.
> Low salaries for public sector service providers make it challenging to fill positions, especially with highly experienced individuals.
> Several existing obstacles preclude farm business service providers from collaborating.
> Non-agricultural professionals often lack knowledge of farm-related requirements or applications.
Opportunities
> Federal and state decision makers are increasingly aware of the need for more farm business technical assistance.
> Groups, such as the Agricultural Viability Alliance, are working to garner funding and create policy changes to build both the capacity and number of Northeast farm business service providers. They are also working to reduce obstacles to collaborate across the region, including with historically underserved farmers.
> Federal monies allocated to New Hampshire are being used to address some of the farm business technical assistance needs.
> Conversations within organizations and groups around collaborating and/or hiring additional staff are being held.
Recommendations
Organizations working on this issue
Authors
Lead Author
Seth Wilner, Extension Field Specialist, Agricultural Business Management, UNH Extension
Contributing Authors
Christopher Laughton, Director of Knowledge Exchange, Farm Credit East
Sara Powell, Program Director, Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship
Andy Pressman, Agriculture Director, National Center for Appropriate Technology
This brief was developed through a participatory process led by the NH Food Alliance, a program of the University of New Hampshire. The brief content is comprised of the opinions, perspectives, and information gathered by the authors and participants, and does not necessarily represent those of the NH Department of Agriculture, Markets, and Food or the NH Food Alliance.
Head to the NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan main page to read more briefs, browse recommendations and learn how the strategic plan was created.
References
1 United States Department of Agriculture. National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2022 Census of Agriculture State Data. Nass.usda.gov. Published 2023. Accessed October 1, 2024. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_2_US_State_Level/st99_2_008_008.pdf
2 United States Department of Agriculture. National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2022 Census of Agriculture State Profile: New Hampshire. Nass.usda.gov. Published 2023. Accessed October 1, 2024. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Online_Resources/County_Profiles/New_Hampshire/cp99033.pdf
3 Ackoff S, Flom E. Polanco, VG. Howard, D. Manly, J. Mueller, C. Rippon-Butler, H. Wyatt, L. Building a Future with Farmers 2022: Results and Recommendations from the National Young Farmer Survey. National Young Farmers Coalition. Published August 31, 2022. https://www.youngfarmers.org/resource/nationalsurveyreport2022/
4 Hoffelmeyer, M. Wypler, J. Leslie, IS. Surveying queer farmers: How heteropatriarchy affects farm viability and farmer well-being in U.S. agriculture. J. Agric. Food Syst. Community Dev. Published 2023. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2023.123.005
