The crop plan that gets used is the one that fits on one page. Multi-tab spreadsheets are honest about the complexity but nobody opens them after April.
This is the one-page template. Built for direct-market farms. Plan for what sells, not what grows easiest.
The rule change
Conventional crop planning starts with what you can grow. Direct-market crop planning starts with what you can sell. Different starting point, different plan.
For each category you grow, answer:
- Demand signal — who's buying this, at what price, in what volume.
- Price ceiling — the most a buyer in your market will pay for it at peak.
- Sell-through window — how long you have before the product perishes or the market moves on.
- Cost floor — what you can't go below (see the Pricing Toolkit).
Only then do you plan the beds, the succession, the labor.
The one-page template
Pick your top 5 crops by revenue (not acreage). Fill one row per crop. The gated version has the fillable worksheet.
| Crop | Direct-sell channel | Start date | Harvest window | Target volume / week | Target price | Ceiling / floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tomatoes (heirloom) | Market + restaurant | Mar 15 (transplant) | Jul – Oct | 120 lb/wk | $6/lb | $8 / $4 |
| Lettuce (mixed head) | CSA + market | continuous Feb–Oct | Apr–Nov | 80 heads/wk | $4/head | $5 / $2.50 |
| Eggs (pastured) | Market + subscription | year-round | year-round | 45 doz/wk | $8/doz | $9 / $5.50 |
| Strawberries (U-pick + pack) | Market + U-pick | May–Jun | 4 wks | 150 qt/wk | $8/qt | $10 / $6 |
| Garlic (curing + green) | Market + value-add | Oct plant, Jun harvest | Jun–Nov | 40 lb/wk | $12/lb (cured) | $14 / $8 |
Five rows. One page. Revisit at the start of each season.
What this surfaces
When you fill it out honestly, three patterns show up every time:
- The undersold crop. Something you grow in volume that sells below your ceiling. The $/hour math works against you. Either raise the price, add a premium channel, or plant less and replace with something higher-margin.
- The overstretched crop. Something you grow in volume that hits its ceiling but has a short window — one bad week of weather or sales and you eat the loss. Build a backup channel (restaurant, value-add processing) or scale back.
- The quiet winner. Something you only grow a little of, that consistently sells out, and you've never scaled. This is usually the biggest miss. Double it next season.
The four-week check-in
At the end of each month, 15 minutes:
- Which rows are on plan?
- Which rows are off? Why?
- What adjusts for the next 4 weeks?
Not a full replan. A calibration. Catching a problem in month 2 is a fix; catching it in month 5 is a loss.
Planting follows the selling, not the other way around
The classic mistake: "We have the beds, let's plant them." Better framing: "What will we sell in month 6, and what do we need to plant now to have it?"
That's why the channel column is to the left of the start-date column on this worksheet. The channel is the forcing function.
Common planning failures
- Growing too many varieties. You are not a trial garden. Pick 2–3 varieties per category, max. More variety slows harvest and packing.
- Planting to the land instead of to the sales. If you have 1 acre and your market absorbs 0.6 acres worth, plant 0.6 and rest the rest. Or add a second channel.
- No succession on fast crops. Lettuce at 3-week succession, radishes at 2-week. One planting isn't a plan; it's a guess.
- Saving the premium crop "for later." Specialty crops depreciate fast. Garlic scapes are worth something Jun 1, almost nothing Jul 1. Sell on time.
Sync planning with spring opportunities
See Spring Opportunities — what buyers want this season for the demand signals that should shape your channel column. The two documents work together: this one plans production, that one plans demand.
Apply to sell on CollectiveCrop
Start your seller application →
Next step — do this today
Pull last year's sales data. Rank crops by gross revenue. Fill the top 5 into the worksheet above — current-year numbers for target volume and price. That one exercise will surface where the real leverage is in your season.
Then run the four-week check-in on the first of every month. The plan that gets used is the one that gets looked at.