The Lean Farm: How to Minimize Waste, Increase Efficiency, and Maximize Value and Profits with Less Work

by Ben Hartman

A practical, systems-based approach for a more sustainable farming operation

"Ben Hartman has revolutionized his methods, cut down his work hours dramatically, and shrunk the size of his farm, all while making a better income."— Civil Eats

To many people today, using the words “factory” and “farm” in the same sentence is nothing short of sacrilege. In many cases, though, the same sound business practices apply whether you are producing cars or carrots. Author Ben Hartman and other young farmers are increasingly finding that incorporating the best new ideas from business into their farming can drastically cut their wastes and increase their profits, making their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable. By explaining the lean system for identifying and eliminating waste and introducing efficiency in every aspect of the farm operation, The Lean Farm makes the case that small-scale farming can be an attractive career option for young people who are interested in growing food for their community.

Working smarter, not harder, also prevents the kind of burnout that start-up farmers often encounter in the face of long, hard, backbreaking labor.



Lean principles grew out of the Japanese automotive industry, but they are now being followed on progressive farms around the world. Using examples from his own family’s one-acre community-supported farm in Indiana, Hartman clearly instructs other small farmers in how to incorporate lean practices in each step of their production chain, from starting a farm and harvesting crops to training employees and selling goods.

Inside The Lean Farm you'll discover how to apply lean practices









 

While the intended audience for this book is small-scale farmers who are part of the growing local food movement, Hartman’s prescriptions for high-value, low-cost production apply to farms and businesses of almost any size or scale that hope to harness the power of lean in their production processes.

Ben Hartman was named a "Grist 50! Fixer"

"The Lean Farm  should be dissected, digested, and discussed—then applied—on every single big or small, wholesale or retail, livestock or produce. It would make all farms more profitable, productive, and pleasurable.”—Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farm

Genres: Agriculture, Nonfiction, Gardening, Audiobook, Reference, Green, Business

382 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 4, 2015

Reviews

[Moss · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5 meaning I liked the book but had notable reservations. Here they are listed in order of importance.

1. Building efficiency often means sacrificing resiliency. We see this in our ag system now. And resilience is more critical than ever given... climate catastrophe?? This was barely brought up. For example, he regularly talks in the book about ordering seed days before he needs to plant, and I genuinely wonder, when seed sales increased 400% in March due to COVID, how they were able to maintain that steady supply. Also, where is he ordering seed? Because any time I try to order seed as late as mid-February half the varieties are sold out.

2. The man relies on unpaid labor to make his farm function. As someone currently looking at farm jobs and the sheer volume of jobs With stipends that work out to $2 an hour, fuck free labor. Your for-profit farm cannot ethically rely on free labor. I swear to god, you really read into any of these books and it's always, how I make $100,000 a year on 1-acre through not paying my workers.

3. Half this book is a rewriting or direct quotes of Taiichi Ohno's writings on Toyota's manufacturing system. You could probably just read his books. White boys really love to slap Japanese words onto unoriginal concepts and call it groundbreaking.

4. Too many Thomas Jefferson quotes. With absolutely no respect, Fuck TJ.

5. Too few practical suggestions. Suggestions included were weak, including: put landscape fabric under tomatoes, heat your greenhouse, and weed early in a weed's life.

6. And for my last, and pettiest, critique he said that legumes fix "soil-bound" nitrogen, which is not how that works.

Anyway, I picked up and read this book because my biggest blind spot when it comes to farming is marketing, and profits, and *gags* business management. This book did have insights into that and hard truths in that regard. Some advice was actually incredibly helpful. But overall, his writing reminds me of my least favorite kind of farmer, namely the lettuce and microgreen simps.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Lean Farm is more about philosophy of lean while the vegetable guide is more about the practical aspects. If you're already thinking like a minimalist you might dive straight into the vegetable guide, the important aspects and tenants of lean are covered there as well.
That being said the learn farm is still worth picking up at some point, and it's quite interesting to see the progress and change in some of the farming systems in the 2 years between the books.

[Pam Dawling · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I heard of this book, I immediately wanted to read it, sensed that I needed to read it, that our farm would benefit from exploring the ideas in it. At the same time, I felt some awkwardness: I might be tempted to hide this book from some of my crew, because gardening is something they’ve chosen because it’s in some ways opposite to factory work. If I introduced some of these ideas would I be seen as trying to make our farm more like a factory? It is unfortunate for simplistic thinking that the lean system ideas came from car manufacturing. As Ben Hartman says, “In some circles, to pair the terms ‘factory’ and ‘farm’ is sacrilege.” Factory farming causes many problems. And yet we should not dismiss the ideas because of this connection. That would be a knee-jerk prejudice. The ideas have value that is useful for other occupations, including farming. Farmers work hard, and we can use good ideas on how to reduce wasted effort so that we can be less stressed, more successful at producing food and happier, with more satisfying lives. And yet, both factories and farms are places of production.

Factory work uses inert consistent raw materials. In farming the raw materials are unpredictable, variable, liable to change. Farmers need to adapt their plans to the situation on the ground.
It’s not even really accurate to say that farmers grow food or raise animals. Farmers adjust environmental conditions as far as they are able, to maximize a plant’s or an animal’s chance of making its own growth.

The Lean System is not geared to taking the fun out of farming. It is geared to make farms more pleasant places to work, places where we can do better work, and leaving us time for other pursuits. Lean is just a tool - you keep your core values. In fact you focus on them more centrally, in addition to respecting your workers. Ben Hartman describes their early days as farmers, working endless days, and gives his reasons for trying the lean system. “Our production . . . was erratic: every week we seemed to seesaw between over-producing and under-producing. We had a sense that if our farm was to survive for the long haul, the chaos would need to settle down.”

Taiichi Ohno, the author of inspiring short books in English on the Lean system describes the method as “looking at the timeline from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that timeline by removing the non-value-added wastes.”

The book explains the five principles of Lean:
1. Precisely specify what the customers value (not just the products, but also the presentation, timing, and packaging or not).
2. Identify the value stream for each product (the steps in the process that create value).
3. Make value flow without interruption (remove waste).
4. Let the customer pull value from the producer (don’t over-produce and dump/push).
5. Pursue perfection (continuous improvement).
6. Yes, he said 5. Respect the workers (harness the collective wisdom).
One place to start reducing waste is to physically clean up the farm. There are five tools with Japanese names beginning with S (the 5S tools). Translated and keeping the S theme, they are Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain. The idea is to cast off the physical junk and waste that weighs down the farm. This reminded me of the domestic “Japanese tidying” craze that has got several of my friends. You get rid of anything that doesn’t bring you joy. The premise is that there is a cost to keeping and storing things. If you get rid of the things you don’t use, and store the useful stuff well, it will be quick and easy to find what you need. You can start with a Red Tag room where you put things no one uses. Once a year you send the unused things on their way. “Shine” means clean well-lit uncluttered spaces. “Standardize” means not just less confusion, but also having a designated result of daily cleaning and restoring order, with a posted photo showing what the area should look like when clean-up is finished. I can really see where one picture can be much more effective than a check-list of a thousand words. The Sustain part is about improving the work environment so that everyone feels good working there, happily absorbed in their task without distraction.

It is important to identify what your customers value. Sometimes Steve Jobs is right and people don’t know what they want till you show them, but often it’s not true. The important bit is not what you think they ought to value, but what they actually value. Observe, ask. Find out which of your activities add value and which add waste. There are four kinds of distraction:
1. Technology fascination, gadgets. Beware of unhelpful complexity.
2. Product fascination: weird and wonderful shapes and colors of vegetables.
3. Process fascination: unusual methods of growing crops.
4. Letting supply determine value. More kale is not always better!
Customers usually value a mix of goods and services such as presentation or reliable deliveries. You can add a small percentage of surprises, but not too many.

Learn to see value and distinguish the tasks that create actual value from the tasks that don’t (wasted movements, waiting time). It may help to write out all the steps of a task in a list and consider the value or wastefulness of each.

There are two main types of waste. Type 1 is tasks that are necessary but do not add actual value. Type 2 waste is pure waste that achieves nothing. This part of the book was very challenging for me. I feel a bit insulted, disregarded when necessary work is called wasteful. I don’t think this classification is helpful, especially as it includes a lot of managerial tasks like planning. I do understand that the value of the final product is not directly related to the time spent planning, and that it’s good to keep a check on overhead hours and not let them expand beyond usefulness. Is reading this book type 1 waste? But the author says eliminating the type 2 pure waste is not enough. Type 1 is more pernicious. It’s only the last turn of the nut on a bolt that tightens it – the other turns are “just movement”. Only planting the seeds, harvesting the crop, washing, packaging and display add value. Thinning, weeding and bed prep do not. “Tending the plants might be the fun part of farming but it does not create value.” Hmmm. I don’t find this bit helpful. I disagree with this outlook. I get it that it’s best to farm so that tasks such as soil preparation, plant support, pruning, weed management are minimized. Hand weeding, especially, is a sign of earlier failures, a task to strive to not need to do. But if it’s needed, it must be done! The truth I can see in this approach is that planting and harvesting are the top priority tasks. We’ve long used the mantra “Prioritize planting in the planting season” and here most of the year is the planting season for something. I still don’t like calling weed management wasted time! It’s less wasteful than not dealing with the weeds.

Within the two main types of waste there are ten categories of waste:
1. Overproduction (poor forecasting, surprise weather, market volatility)
2. Waiting (people waiting or products waiting, needing storage)
3. Transportation (inefficient use of vehicles and time)
4. Overprocessing (bagging when not needed; too much time on fancy websites)
5. Inventory too high
6. Wasted motion (poor farm layout, poor task planning)
7. Too many culls before or after storage
8. Overburdening people or tools, leading to injury and poor work
9. Uneven production and sales (lost rhythm, more mistakes)
10. Unused talent (look to all workers for ideas for improvements)

The goal is to banish waste to increase efficiency. This can involve counter-intuitive thinking and plain hard work. There are 9 tools to root out waste:
1. Minimize moves (efficient layout of packing sheds, storage of tools etc. Use both hands fully, and add as much value as possible to the item in your hand before setting it down). “Single piece flow” is much faster than “batch and queue” even if that is counterintuitive.
2. Lighten the load. Don’t use unnecessarily heavy tools or containers.
3. Don’t overdo, over-package, over-clean
4. Ask Why? five times to get to the root cause of a problem and find something you can improve.
5. Employ mistake-proofing. Everyone is responsible for preventing mistakes. Have two different people check on important things. Each person exercises quality control on the steps that went before.
6. Shorten cycle time: choose faster-maturing varieties, use optimal germination temperatures, use transplants to get earlier crops, find processes to speed growth (heating to 30F in winter double the plant growth compared to an unheated greenhouse), cut out unnecessary steps.
7. Choose technology with a human touch: the machine should serve the workers and not vice versa. Choose flexible machinery that does not introduce more waste or require complex training.
8. Order supplies just in time
9. Benefit from the expertise of others: get skilled tasks done by people with those skills.

Hartman says: “We did not want to add hours to our workload. . . But we wanted to make our work easier . . . after we leaned up our production. . . we saw an incredible difference. We were working less and our food quality was increasing . . . we wondered if lean had management tools.” Waste in management occurs in the planning stages: choosing the wrong crops, bogging down your farm with experiments, producing too much of something. Farm management is considered so wasteful that there are seven tools for rooting out management waste:
1. Practice production control (stop hoarding). Get better at estimating yields, predicting the weather, planting and harvesting only what will be needed. Don’t overproduce to compensate for lost opportunities in the past – lost opportunities are an emotional loss but not a physical loss. Actual losses result in actual harm. [Hmm – isn’t loss of income an actual harm?] Make value-added products with surpluses – don’t dump excess produce on the market as it is.
2. Cut costs to grow profit margins. Decreasing costs by $x increases profits by $x. Cost savings will continue to benefit you in the future. Try to reduce wasteful costs by 5% per year. Increasing sales by $x does not increase profits by $x, because of extra costs. It also adds extra work and stress.
3. Replace low-profit items with high-profit items. “What would happen if we stopped growing our three or four poorest-performing crops?
4. Maximize production while keeping fixed costs the same. Don’t expand equipment or infrastructure until you are at full capacity using what you’ve got.
5. Level the load. Look at the workload and sales over the year and try to even it out to reduce stress and wasted time. [But by all means plan a vacation!]
6. Look at measurable aspects of your work to assess progress. Examples include the dollar value per (standard) container, yield per square foot, labor per unit, machinery-hours per unit for various crops. Keep goals measurable and attainable.
7. Balance creativity and discipline: too much creativity can cost you too much. 15% of time or space on experimental projects is enough! The rest of your resources should go on known paths to success.

“Pull selling” is replenishment – when the customers need more, provide more. This is more efficient than having large amounts and no idea who wants it. Not always easy when you are selling a product that takes 40 days, 60 days or more to produce. Hartman recommends not to set prices by adding profit (=wages for you) to costs, but instead to agree a price with your customer. The customer doesn’t care what your costs are. Charge what you can, then take responsibility for your costs yourself. If it doesn’t pay to sell that crop, stop growing it. If your customers value red tomatoes more than heirlooms, change the ratio of what you grow. Don’t be tied to growing heirlooms if you struggle to make enough money from them.

Continuous improvement (Kaizen) involves looking at each of the steps in providing a crop and listing them as of value or waste, then focusing on reducing waste. All workers can contribute their insight. There are 5 tips:
1. Develop regular improvement routines. Have clipboards where everyone can leave comments. Have meetings to review recent events and develop new ideas.
2. Focus on the 3 or 4 most-needed improvements. Set priorities, take logical steps.
3. Upgrade standards often, as you find improvements. Take a leaf rake over the salad mix after each cutting.
4. Compare your farm to your farm – don’t recreate someone else’s farm.
5. Don’t wait for things to go wrong – it’s harder to improve things during a crisis.

Respecting the workers goes hand-in-hand with continuous improvement. You need well-trained, well-treated staff. There are 3 tools to help achieve continuous improvement in workers:
1. Training on the job. Train yourself first, test out every task before training others on it. Break the job into steps and write them in short sentences on training sheets.
2. Standard Operating Procedures – instruction sheets with pictures showing how you (as a group of workers) want the job done.
3. Visual Systems Management – Color-coded task management boards to distinguish To Do from Done

Supervise the work, not the workers. Assess by the value produced, not the speed the hands are moving at.

This is a very thought-provoking book. I found I was constantly assessing our farm as I read this book: “ah, we already do that (well)” “oh we really need to do that” “ooo I’m not happy with that idea”

Another part of the book gives examples from their farm, to show how these ideas have been useful. Here are some examples:
• They shifted to all 30” beds, bought a smaller tractor with the appropriate rear tire spacing and narrow tires, along with a bed shaper. This left very little hand work for prepping beds. Clay Bottom Farm has 50 hoophouse beds and 56 outdoor beds, 30” x 90’ mostly. Also 5 plots of annual vegetables 30’ x 60’ and various perennials.
• They built a 6’ x 14’ box shaped mini-greenhouse (with heating) inside one of their heated high tunnels for their earliest propagation, rather than “fire up” their whole propagation house. When there was extra space in the mini-greenhouse, they grew microgreens and sunflower shoots.
• They hung pairs of metal pipes lengthwise above the crops in their high tunnel and used them as shelves for seed flats.
• They started hand-pollinating their high tunnel tomatoes with a wand to increase yield, and then didn’t need to plant so many after that. Installing bees was even less work.
• They reduced chickweed in their over-wintered spinach beds by only sowing spinach in the fall in beds without winter annual weeds.
• They got to the point where their cultivated area was only as big as the crew can hoe/weed in one day. They weed every Monday, while the weeds are still

[William Guerrant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the book is a description of the "lean" system of production, developed in Japan and employed most famously at Toyota. The author has successfully adapted the lean principles to his farm and encourages other farmers to do so as well. While there are some helpful and persuasive recommendations (reduce the number of tools to the bare essentials, keep work areas organized and clean, minimize movement between gardens and processing areas, etc.), I had expected more concrete and specific examples from the author's farm. For the most part those appear only in Chapter 10--the most interesting and helpful part of the book, in my opinion.

I intend to hold onto this book and use it as a reference, and it has helped me identify several specific areas for improvement this year on our farm. I expect many farmers will find it to be a valuable resource.

[Sara-Zoe Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

My PD is looking a lot different than my teaching days ☺️

[Going Green Mom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely an interesting read. Geared toward the market gardener, but I found multiple things I'll apply to my home garden. I also found myself questioning where in the journey they were when we had the chance to tour the farm, and what has changed since the move.

[Bob Wallner · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you had told me at the beginning of 2018 that one of the best books I would read on applying lean principles would be a book called "Lean Farm", I would have said you were crazy. Lean Farm is an excellent audiobook on the adoption and application of true lean principles in a small local farm.


The author sets the groundwork by telling how, when he and his wife decided to get into farming, they faced many of the challenges faced by any startup and how a customer, who happened to be a lean sensei, took them under his wing and helped them create a lean culture.


Part of me expected this to be a 7-hour audiobook on 5s since I couldn't imagine how advanced lean principles could be applicable to such a seasonal and unpredictable business as farming. I was pleasantly surprised to find out how this farm has gotten into many of the advanced lean principles. One whole chapter is dedicated to case studies of how the authors implemented lean strategies to make ongoing improvements. 


I have been practicing lean for several years in manufacturing and I have seldom seen a better lean culture then this farm has.


The last couple chapters get into political and ethical issues regarding industrial farming. I am not saying that I agree with industrial farming nor am I saying the practice should be ignored; however, the last two chapters became a little distracting to the overall purpose of the book. I guess you could argue that these topics relate to Toyota's philosophy of respect for humanity, I found them to be a little bit of noise.


For me, this was one of the best lean books that I have read (listened to) in 2018 and I would highly encourage any lean practitioner to read it pay careful attention to how lean can be adopted to any industry or any sized business.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

borrowed from The Big Man Upstairs. i fear this was really good and awesome and nerdy. no i definitely didn’t take six pages of notes to discuss w the aforementioned Big Man Upstairs. i think i will be thinking about this forever and always and will probably be purchasing a copy for myself quite soon. but also why does this man say weeding and irrigation arent value added tasks and therefore kind of a waste of time. i found that silly. but other than that this is pretty slay. also interesting because he talks about the “value” a lot and for him that’s money so kind of a fun thought experiment to read this while working on a farm where the value isn’t money. pondered what the value is on this particular farm and i still don’t know!! but fun to think about!!!

[Dayton Outar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. The content is not just useful for farming but also for any business operation. The way that the author took principles of from the father of Toyota's Production System and integrated in his farm was refreshing and encouraging. Encouraging in that it prompted me to constant think about transferring ideas across disciplines.

This was really good. It wasn't a lousy read. The way it is written caused me to grasp the ideas quickly, which made it a quick read.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really excellent! The whole time I was reading this I couldn't stop the flow of ideas and inspiration for how I want to tweak the operation of my farm. It's know time to sit back with a note book in hand and read it again much more slowly!

[Celeste Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think ever one should read this book! It explains out how to run a farm but it also explains in detail how to value your time. Your time and how you spend it has a value. To many of us neglect our value.
Hartman takes “penny wise and pound foolish” metaphors to the next level.

[Tomek · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I appreciated this perspective, and the book is straightforward without being oversimplified or cursory, it read too much like propaganda.

[zeknir · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh. it was interesting at first, giving a different perspective to look at your farm with, but it dragged on and on. basically, organization is key, from where and how things are stored, and how you move about the farm. putting tools in logical, easily accessible places, and not having too many things to take care of are key points. waste, in terms of time and energy, physical movements, packaging, and overproduction are all points of focus. it’s pretty simple. i didn’t need a whole book to tell me this, and it’s not revolutionary. he definitely overthinks it. he takes all the fun and heart out of working with the land, and turns it into a factory line. sure, take some pointers from it, and streamline some workflow, but come on, one of the reasons we do this is to get away industrialization methods. loosen up, and enjoy the work, just be logical and don’t make things harder for yourself.

[Felicity Fields · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, practical approach to using the lean methodology on a small farm. The previous farming book I read focused largely on ideas. This book is focused almost entirely on practical ideas with steps to impement and examples. What a breath of fresh air!

I had heard of lean but didn't know much about it, and I loved learning about it through the lense of a small farm. I do not want to have a small farm, but I am fascinated by how business systems work. This book was all about systems and growing food - a perfect combination.

[Raelene · Rating 4 out of 5]

The central idea of the book is SO good and so important on a farm. The question we always need to ask ourselves is: does this add value to the final product I am producing? That question is, yes, essential to making a profit as a commercial farmer, but is also essential to your sanity and happiness as a homesteader. The answer will be different depending on who you are, how your farm is set up, and what your goals are, but the question is nonetheless essential for all kinds of farmers.

[CARLOS Pinzon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is an interesting read with some solid examples, but it’s mostly geared towards small farms or greenhouses. If you’re running a larger, industrial operation, the ideas might feel a bit limited in terms of implementation. It’s more of a general guide, so while it offers great insights on reducing waste and increasing efficiency, it may not go deep enough for bigger-scale farms. Still, for anyone in smaller agriculture settings, it’s a handy book with practical tips.

[Torrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent resource. It took me awhile to read it cover to cover, but I'm glad I did -- there was so much information in here about how to reduce waste and "lean up" your farm operation for better work/life balance and better profit margins. The only thing that would have made this better if it was specific for flower farming! :)

[Ivy Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not for light reading, there are not very many pretty farm pictures. This really is for budding farmers or those who are currently farming to learn how to streamline their systems and farm without wasting energy, produce and profits in CSA farming.

[emyrose8 · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5- If I were to start a vegetable/fruit farm, this is the resource I'd use to create my farm plan. Since my goal is homesteading/sustenance farming, this wasn't as helpful to me. Still, there were some nuggets. The lean method is to eliminate waste and reduce costs/time if possible.

[Fadri Mokolintad · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, let's get to work.... ;)

[D Jung · Rating 4 out of 5]

An inspiring read about farm efficiency.

[Sean Curl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just the farm, every day life as well.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and insigthful

[Will G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lean seems less about "working harder for less money" when it's one's own farm.

[Ivan Ilievski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think every farmer should read this book...

[George.redinger]

The Machine that Changed the world come to a Farm.
Hopefully more Farms soon.

[Itsjustmeghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5-4 stars

[Clayton Morrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good overview of lean. Great integration w/ farm strategies. Really appreciated the abundance of examples and diagrams.

[Garth Wolfenden · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing rethink of the farming business.

After working under a lean style in mining I never thought of applying it to my new endeavour.
A well written, easy reference book, with plenty of examples, the lean farm is a fun ride to a better life.
Do more with less, use what you need, get rid of the burden of gadgets and earn more while saving are just some of the ideas in this book. Worth twice the money on the first read and I tag it covert to cover twice in three days.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great ideas with practical application examples.