Postharvest Profit for Small Farms

Protect the Value of Your Harvest After It Leaves the Field

First Edition

A practical guide for small farms, market gardeners, smallholders, homesteaders, cooperatives, and rural entrepreneurs who want to reduce crop losses, improve quality, and earn more from the food they already grow.

Postharvest Profit for Small Farms begins where many farming books stop: after harvest. It explains how crops lose value between the field and the buyer-and how better handling, sorting, curing, drying, cooling, storage, packaging, transport, and market presentation can help protect that value.

This book is written for growers who may not have refrigeration, specialist equipment, or large infrastructure. It focuses on practical, low-cost, adaptable improvements that can be used across different crops, climates, markets, and farm scales.

Inside, readers will learn how to:

• Identify where crops lose value after harvest
• Understand the small-farm postharvest system from field to buyer
• Improve harvest timing, field handling, sorting, grading, trimming, and culling
• Manage the critical first hour after harvest to reduce heat, wilting, bruising, and decay
• Decide when to wash, when not to wash, and how to avoid creating new risks
• Cure roots, tubers, bulbs, and squash for better storage potential
• Use drying, cooling, shade, airflow, and low-cost infrastructure more effectively
• Store different crop groups with better attention to temperature, humidity, pests, mould, and compatibility
• Choose packaging and transport methods that protect produce rather than destroy it
• Improve market display, buyer communication, food safety habits, and repeat sales

The book also includes practical templates and worksheets for postharvest assessment, harvest-day planning, sorting and grading, loss tracking, storage inspection, drying records, cooling decisions, packaging comparison, transport checks, buyer feedback, traceability, pest inspection, seasonal review, and a 30-day postharvest improvement plan.

Ideal for growers who want to lose less, sell better-quality produce, protect buyer relationships, and improve farm income without simply trying to grow more.