Ecological Imperatives, Personal Values and Economics
by Elizabeth Henderson and Karl North

This manual takes the desire to make a living farming and shows how to turn it into reality through a workbook approach that is both personal and planetary.

Worksheets and exercises coax out the often-downplayed dreams and desires, priorities and objectives that point the way to work that feeds rather than exhausts. It offers "what you need to understand about" the ecosystems that sustain the farm, social structures and processes, and the economics of the farm and food system.

The tools in Whole Farm Planning, borrowed in part from Holistic Management, are powerful because they fold in all the energies that add up to life on a farm. The authors also offer systems for monitoring the plan and making adjustments in approach.

Elizabeth Henderson is a partner at Peacework Organic Farm in western New York, often NOFA's emissary to the world outside the Northeast, and author of several books on organic agriculture. Karl North operates the farm he built in 1980, Northland Sheep Dairy. He has studied and has written on Holistic Management for NOFA periodicals.