Lean Management Principles for Farmers

WE’VE HAD A GREAT RESPONSE FOR THIS WORKSHOP! UNFORTUNATELY, WE ARE AT CAPACITY AND CAN NO LONGER TAKE RSVP’S. To be put on the waiting list, please email stevie@buylocalfood.org with your name and farm/business name. Thank you!

Can factory principles be applied to farming without compromising the values of sustainability? According to our presenter and lean business consultant Scott Morrison, it can. This is backed up by the recent book “The Lean Farm” authored by Indiana small farmer, Ben Hartman. His popular book created a buzz in the agricultural community, offering an approach to efficiency that focuses on increasing production capacity by changing your processes in all aspects of your operations. Farmers like Hartman found that incorporating lean principles drastically cuts their wastes and increases their profits, making their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable.

Exactly how do these principles translate to farm operations? Lean makes you think about the minutia of operations and how even the smallest improvement can add up to savings over time: in money, tools, and resources. It means taking note of the number of movements a person makes from harvest to market, using the right sized and functioning tools, improving communication with your employees, and seeing where you can minimize the use of resources like water and packaging.
Join us for a half-day workshop on lean farming presented by consultant Scott Morrison at Outlook Farm with owner, Brad Morse. We will begin with an introduction to Lean principles and apply them in a walkthrough of Outlook’s post-harvest operations. We will discuss how to map out any process in your operations to identify opportunities to streamline and reduce costs, determine the capacity of production and how to create investment and ownership from your workforce to make improvements to the farm.

Our presenter, Scott Morrison, consulted with Local Hero member Red Fire Farm, referenced in a recent May 17th Boston Globe article. He has worked with other farms throughout the Northeast in addition to Red Fire and we are excited to bring him back to the Valley to speak to more farmers on the value in lean farming principles.

This workshop is coordinated in collaboration with PVGrows Investment Fund, Franklin County CDC (FCCDC), and Massachusetts Department of Agriculture (MDAR) Agricultural Business Training Program

For more information contact Stevie Schafenacker – stevie@buylocalfood.org, 413-665-7100 ext. 27

About Scott:

Scott Morrison has thirty-five years of experience in the fields of Quality, Engineering, and Operations, the last six as a 5S/Lean consultant to a variety of companies across the US, including a few farms in New England. He has a sharp eye for understanding processes and then cutting through the waste to enhance the value of those processes. Excellent communication skills plus both shop floor and senior management experience allow Scott to easily relate to everyone in your organization.

More About Lean Farming:

Farmer to Farmer podcast: The Lean Farm
“Fueling the Farm to Table…”, Boston Globe
The Lean Farm by Ben Hartman
Scott Morrison

“Funding for this workshop was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service through grant 16FMPPMA0002.  Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.”