Rodale Institute

Pennsylvania Organic Farm Vitality Planning Grant

PLEASE NOTE: As of 2024, the PA Farm Vitality Planning Grant is not currently funded. Stay tuned for updates!

Pennsylvania Organic Farm Vitality Planning Grant

Kitchen Table Consultants and the Vitality Grant were central to developing a business plan and budgets in order to get funding and loans to transfer the farm to the next generation.  Working with KTC helped immensely in preparing for working with lenders, and maybe even more so, helping me to understand our farm business from the long term planning on down to daily actions.

Jennifer Glenister

New Morning Farm

What You Need to Know

  • 100% of people who applied last year received funding!
  • This grant is exclusively available to Pennsylvania farms.
  • The maximum grant amount is $7,500. Most projects are for $10,000.
  • The application process is quick and easy.
  • This is the LAST year this grant will be available.
  • Funds are awarded on a first come, first served basis until exhausted.
  • Apply today and use the funding on a project anytime before June 2023.

Why Partner with KTC to Plan the Future of Your Farm

When you work with us to execute your farm business planning project, you’ll enjoy:

1-on-1 Coaching

We will guide you through the entire business planning process, from building a financial foundation to developing an actionable game plan.

Empowering Knowledge

Learn how to analyze and use your farm’s historical numbers to clarify your goals and build a strategy to achieve them.

Access to Our Network

For over 12 years, we’ve fostered relationships with a diverse list of industry experts—who can help take your farm business even further.

Collaborate with KTC and Rodale Institute

Rodale Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to growing the organic movement through rigorous research, farmer training, and consumer education. Widely recognized as a founder of the modern organic movement, Rodale Institute has been a global leader in regenerative organic agriculture for over 70 years.

KTC has partnered with Rodale Institute to support your business planning process.
Specifically, Rodale will help you understand:

  • Organic pricing trends to inform your price forecasts
  • Organic market trends to inform your sales volume forecasts
  • Operational considerations and costs of transitioning to organic
  • Regulatory costs involved with organic certification

The Pennsylvania Farm Vitality Planning Grant was a tremendous opportunity for my business. Through the grant I was shown how to use QuickBooks. Also, my consultant guided me through a budget analysis that allowed me to better understand my business and resulted in more informed decisions on pricing of my products. I highly recommend the Vitality Grant to any farmer no matter what stage you are with your business.

Wandy Bush

Dragonfly Hill Farm & Kitchen

Start My Business Plan!

6 Easy Steps to Get Started

  1. Complete the simple inquiry form below.
  2. We will follow up with you to give you guidelines so you can easily apply for the grant.
  3. Apply for the grant—it usually takes less than an hour!
  4. Once your application is approved*, forward your acceptance letter to KTC.
  5. We’ll send you a customized proposal to provide business planning assistance for your grant project.
  6. Sign your proposal, and we’ll start working with you to plan the future of your farm business!

*While there is a high probability that your grant application will be approved, we cannot make any guarantees.

Let Us Guide You Through Our Planning Process

Now is when the exciting work begins and we dive deep into our business plan development process!

Build a Financial Foundation

First, you need an organized and efficient accounting system, which we will set up for you (typically in QuickBooks). During this phase, we will:

  1. Improve your Profit & Loss (P&L) Chart of Accounts, empowering you to understand and utilize the numbers for budgeting and industry benchmarking.
  2. Improve your Balance Sheet Chart of Accounts to track the value of assets and liabilities.
  3. Run new financial reports to help you understand the performance of your farm.

Analyze Past Performance

Next, it’s time to take an even closer look at your numbers. We will: 

  1. Organize everything into a master reports folder, then review and analyze all of your financial reports.
  2. Analyze key ratios (e.g., gross margins, labor-to-sale ratio, etc.) to see how you measure against other similar farms.
  3. Help you understand what your past numbers are telling you about the history and current state of the business.

Define Strategies for Success

It’s time to hone in on your business vision and definition of success! During this phase, we’ll help you: 

  1. Clarify your financial and business goals.
  2. Perform a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of your farm.
  3. Facilitate broad strategy conversations to guide the business planning and budget development process.

Create a Budget & Business Plan

In this final planning stage, we’ll handcraft your pro forma (future projections) P&L and Statement of Cash Flows for the next three years, including detailed production planning, labor planning, and debt service plans. We will collaborate with organic experts from Rodale Institute to help you carefully plan for the financial implications of transitioning to organic farming.

There are two crucial reasons for creating a budget:

  1. The process forces us to discuss and plan for every critical detail of your farm.
  2. Once your budget is complete, we’ll help you enter it into your accounting system so you can compare your farm’s actual performance against your projections.

Once we have all your numbers, we will develop a strategic game plan that distills the decisions made in the budgeting process into an actionable bulleted 10-20 page document to guide your future business development. This business plan is designed to be a useful tool for you as a farmer and business owner.