THE BIG SIX / 006 / ENTERPRISE
Booker T. Whatley
The Farm Is a Business.
The historical record
Horticulturist and Tuskegee professor Booker T. Whatley advocated for small-farm business models built around suitable crops, careful management and direct customer relationships. His clientele membership club concept connected production planning with a committed group of customers.
In a 1982 interview, Whatley explained how membership, pick-your-own operations and marketing could work together. His ideas form an important strand in the history of direct farm marketing; this page does not claim he was the sole originator of every model now called community-supported agriculture.
Sources: Booker T. Whatley interview — The Small Farm Plan, Mother Earth News, 1982; Kentucky Department of Agriculture — Whatley’s direct-marketing legacy.
The T&T principle: enterprise
Growing a product is only part of building a farm business. Who will buy it? What will it cost to produce and deliver? What infrastructure is missing? How much value remains with the producer?
For T&T, these questions connect the farm to processing, aggregation, distribution and markets. Our aim is to develop an agricultural economy with room for multiple businesses—not simply a larger harvest without a route to customers.
A question to carry forward
Before you grow more, what evidence shows that a customer wants what you plan to produce?
“The Farm Is a Business” is T&T’s interpretive brand statement, not a quotation attributed to Whatley. Historical business examples are not earnings promises.
