Introduction

So far, we’ve covered a couple big ideas related to agriculture and enterprise: we’ve analyzed the relationships between our livelihoods, communities, ecosystems, and our agricultural businesses, and have identified agroecology as a way to align each element into a more harmonious system. But an understanding of these concepts – while important – is not enough to ensure that we succeed. Instead, we’ll need to turn our attention to fundamental aspects of business planning in order to support you in the journey towards enterprise viability. We start in this module by discussing design and why it is fundamental for agricultural businesses to consider this aspect in parallel to other conventional business elements (including the business plan and financial projections, which we’ll attend to in later modules). 

This first video will highlight some goals for this module, and will help us solidify the connection between design and agroecological enterprise viability in particular.

Watch: Module 3 Introduction

Learning Objectives

In this module, learners will:

1. Define systems, ecosystems, and basic design components for agroecological businesses.
2. Explain the ways in which seeing farms as complex systems embedded within other complex systems can contribute to the wellbeing of ourselves, our farms, and our ecosystems.
3. Practice looking beyond the confines of our individual operations, and instead collaborate with a wider web of life that shapes our wellbeing.
4. Practice using agroecological design tools to bring together your goals, business model and your farm’s natural resources.