Farm Marketing News: Summer 2026
Like you, we've been BUSY this summer. We haven't had a chance to send a newsletter for a couple months, so this is a big one!
Below you'll find everything we've been saving up: custom cut sheets for bulk meat, an explanation of why your email open rates may have fallen off a cliff (don't panic), a couple important shifts in how customers find and buy from farms online, and the usual roundup of platform updates and free resources.
Grab a coffee and enjoy!
— Sarah
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Goodbye, paper cut sheets
If you sell bulk beef or pork, you already know the challenges with using paper cut sheets. Fillable PDFs usually aren’t much better.
We just built the alternative for Glacier Processing Cooperative, a producer-owned meat processor in Montana. Their new Shopify site includes custom interactive cut sheet forms that use conditional logic to walk each customer through only the choices that actually apply to them:
Choose a half beef instead of a quarter, and the form opens up additional questions — how you want the brisket cut, whether to split ribeyes and NY strips between steaks and roasts.
Already said you want the pork belly kept whole? The form hides the bacon questions entirely.
… and so on. The result: fewer mistakes, far less back-and-forth, and more time saved.
The website also handles online sales of grass-fed beef cuts and jerky for shipping or local pickup, with custom design work that their team can still edit in-house.
Curious whether something like this would work for your farm or meat processing business? Talk with our team.
Did your email open rates suddenly drop?
If your open rate dropped dramatically in the last few months, your audience didn't disappear. Your data just got more honest.
What happened: Email platforms like Mailchimp and Klaviyo* have tightened their filters, to filter out more bot traffic. For years, "opens" have been inflated by things that aren't people: Apple's Mail Privacy Protection pre-loading tracking pixels, Gmail image prefetching, corporate firewalls and security scanners clicking every link in an email to check it for malware.
Industry estimates put that inflation somewhere between 5 and 20 percentage points, depending on how many of your subscribers are on Apple devices. Now that the bots are being filtered out, you're seeing what was always underneath.
What this means for your farm:
Your reports got cleaner, not worse. A 30% open rate made of real humans is more useful than a 55% open rate padded by security software.
Don't compare across the change. Your spring numbers and your fall numbers are measuring different things. Create a new baseline and compare forward from here. Do pay attention to subjects and preview text that motivate your subscribers to open.
Subject line A/B tests may pick different winners. Bot opens were quietly voting in those tests. They aren't anymore.
Look beyond opens. Explore clicks, website sessions from email, revenue per email (if your farm sells online), and unsubscribe rate.
And as always, there are opportunities to land your farm's marketing emails in more inboxes and improve open rates. We can also help you improve your open rates, whether you’d like us to manage updates turnkey or coach you to DIY!
Learn about Mailchimp bot filtering and Klaviyo bot-click reporting.
Customers are finding farms differently now…
Whether you like AI or not, it is impacting farm sales in two key ways, especially if your farm or food business sells direct to consumers online.
1. Google answers more questions without sending anyone to your farm’s website
AI Overviews and AI Mode now appear on a large share of search results. When they do, fewer people click through to websites — industry studies through 2026 put the click-through drop somewhere in the 30–60% range for the queries where an AI answer appears, and many small business sites are seeing overall organic traffic down 15–35%.
Here's the encouraging part: AI answers don't only cite big websites. They pull from whichever page most clearly answers the question. A well-structured page on a small farm's website can be cited alongside a national brand.
What actually helps:
Answer real questions in plain language. "How much freezer space does a quarter beef need?" "When does your CSA start?" "Do you deliver to [town]?" Give a direct answer in the first sentence or two, then elaborate.
Keep your farm's facts consistent everywhere, including website, Google Business Profile, social profiles. This is important because AI systems cross-check.
Keep focusing effort on channels you own. Email, SMS, and repeat customers don't depend on anyone's algorithm.
Related: How to pick and use SEO keywords for your farm website
2. Farm customers are shopping inside AI assistants
Over the past year, OpenAI has been building product discovery and checkout directly into ChatGPT, including a February 2026 expansion to over a million Shopify merchants. By March they'd pulled back from handling checkout themselves because shoppers preferred to finish the purchase on the merchant's own site. This means new customers may discover a farm via their AI assistant, then check out on the farm’s website.
If you want your farm to be discovered this way, there's nothing to sign up for and no fee to pay right now. And if you're on Shopify or Square, the platform is largely handling the technical side for you.
What you cando is make sure your products are described well enough to be found and recommended by AI assistants: clear product titles, real descriptions, accurate availability, and a working online store. The same things that help you in Google search help you here.
If your farm sells subscriptions, keep an eye on "click to cancel"
The FTC's negative option rule — the one that would require cancelling a subscription to be as easy as signing up — was struck down by a federal appeals court in 2025. But the FTC restarted the rulemaking in early 2026, and in the meantime has kept bringing enforcement actions against subscription businesses under its general authority.
If your farm runs an auto-renewing CSA, a monthly meat box, or any recurring subscription, nothing is legally required of you today that wasn't before. But the direction of travel is clear, and honestly it's just good practice: make the renewal terms obvious at signup, send a reminder before you charge, and let people cancel without having to email you and wait. Farms that do this tend to have better customer relationships, anyway.
Connect your Farm’s Google Business Profile to Google Analytics
As of this summer, Google now lets you link your Business Profile directly to Google Analytics, so you can see local activity and website traffic in one place instead of toggling between two dashboards.
Once linked, that can include calls, website clicks, direction requests, messages, bookings, menu views, and total interactions (depending on what you have in your profile).
To set it up: In Google Analytics, go to Admin → Product links → Google Business Profile links, click Link, and follow the prompts to choose which profiles to connect.
To find your data: A new Google Business Profile collection appears in your reports once the link exists. Google only makes the last 6 months of Business Profile metrics available, regardless of the date range you select — so if you want a longer history, the sooner you link, the better!
Start with Google's help article — or ask us to take care of it for you.
Shopify News for Farms
Wholesale and B2B features are no longer locked behind Plus. This is a big one for farms selling to restaurants, retailers, or buying clubs. Key B2B features are now built in on all Shopify* plans at no extra cost:
Up to 3 active B2B catalogs (assigned via Markets)
Company profiles and payment terms
Volume pricing
ACH payments (U.S. only)
Vaulted credit cards
You can run a blended D2C and B2B site, or a dedicated B2B site. A few things remain Plus-only: unlimited catalogs, direct catalog assignment to companies/locations, partial payments, and deposits. If you've been managing wholesale orders in a spreadsheet or a second platform, it may be worth checking out this new functionality!
Discounts by market. You can now assign discounts or run sales for specific markets only — including wholesale/B2B markets only.
Rollouts: schedule and test storefront changes. The new Rollouts feature lets you save theme changes, schedule them to go live at a specific date and time, and set an end date so your store reverts automatically when a promotion ends. You can also A/B test changes against your current theme with real traffic and pick the winner based on conversions.
This is perfect for holiday announcements, flash sales, and seasonal banners you'd otherwise have to remember to take down. Find it under Markets → Rollouts in your admin.
New shipping page and shipping options. The Shipping and delivery settings page has been reorganized — same functions, new layout, so give yourself a minute to find things. New capabilities include:
Weight or price range conditions within a single shipping option
Custom descriptions for each shipping option, shown at checkout
Automatic free shipping once an order hits a threshold
Also note: "shipping rates" are now called "shipping options."
SMS marketing automations. As of May 2026, Shopify's Messaging app supports automated marketing texts to SMS subscribers, usable in standard workflows like abandoned cart and browse abandonment.
Square News for Farms
Advanced rules on manual discounts. BOGO requirements, category-specific targeting, and conditional logic — previously limited to automatic discounts — can now be applied to manual discounts.
Discounted UPS shipping labels. Set up a UPS account and buy labels right from the Square Dashboard, no third-party tool needed. Read more.
Offline payments on by default. Square Point of Sale now accepts cards during network outages by default. Transactions process when connectivity returns, and sellers are responsible for any declines — manage or disable this in your POS device settings. Review Square's offline payment guidance.
Pre-order only items. Flag items as pre-order only on Square Online and Profiles, with custom fulfillment windows. This functionality isn’t designed for deposit-based pre-orders like bulk beef, but for anything else needing lead time and available within a set schedule, for instance seasonal or holiday offerings. Set up items for online preordering.
Availability at a glance. Your Item Library now shows status indicators for available, sold out, and hidden. Click each one to update availability and inventory on the spot.
Klaviyo News for Farms
Product recommendations in SMS. Dynamic, personalized product recommendations now work in text messages using real-time catalog and customer data. How to use product feeds and recommendations
Canva integration. Build an email in Canva and export the design straight to your Klaviyo template library in one click.
The Latest Free Resources for Farms
Profit & Loss Statements: A Foundational Guide for Small Farms — from Community Alliance with Family Farmers. This guide is designed to build a foundational understanding of key financial concepts essential for managing a farm business, with specific guidance tailored to the needs of organic farms. It will guide you through foundational business terminology and demonstrate how to read a Profit and Loss statement (P&L). A guide to reading and building a P&L, plus a free workbook and six short tutorial videos. Available in English and Spanish.
Customizing POS systems for farmers, and farmstand tips — Growing for Market Podcast, with Lindsey Lusher Shute of Farm Generations Cooperative and GrownBy. In this episode, Lindsey Lusher Shute explains how she has been working on customizing POS systems for farmers, and how she has been beta testing the system in her own farm’s store. Innovations include being fully customizable to support a range of farms, being able to process SNAP/EBT, customer and sales tracking, and integration with scanner, printer and cash register.
Western SARE Podcast: 4M Grain & Livestock — In this episode, Anna Merriman of 4M Grain and Livestock in Malta Montana shares her family’s journey in starting an organic farming operation from the very beginning. She’s transparent about the learning curves along the way. The conversation also touches on farm business management, succession, and balancing multiple business ventures.
Grapevine’s Farm Service Directory — Our new directory includes grant writers, business consultants, downloadable resources, membership orgs, conferences, and more. If you or someone you know belongs in it, let us know!
Want your marketing data in one clear place?
We create custom dashboards that turn scattered data into a practical view of what is working. Instead of checking several platforms and digging to find the numbers that matter to your farm business, you can track results in a simple interface and use them to make better decisions.
SEO dashboard — rankings, search visibility, and where your organic traffic is coming from:
Advertising dashboard — spend, reach, and return across Meta and Google in one view:
Interested in a custom dashboard for your farm or food business? Get in touch.
Happy 5 years, Natassia!
July marked Natassia's 5 year anniversary at Grapevine — join us in celebrating! She manages Google Analytics setup, configuring custom metrics dashboards, metrics reports, email automations, and Google ads, and we're very fortunate to have her on the team 💚
Get to know more about Natassia:
👩🏾💻 What field would people never guess you worked in or studied before your work at Grapevine?
Chemical Engineering and Construction Graphics
🍰 Your teammates know you as a baker extraordinaire. What's your top favorite creation over the years?
I don't know if I have a favorite but the Raspberry Lemon Cake with Lemon Pistachio Shortbread and Pistachio Praline is probably the one I think I'm most proud of because I made all of the components—the lemon curd, the raspberry jam, the shortbread cookies, and the praline. And I also made a pistachio ice cream to pair with it.
🐓 What has your favorite Grapevine project been?
I think one of my favorite projects was booklet design because I got to do something creative and create something tangible. I also really enjoyed working on the Healing by Growing Farms site because I think with that one I was able to make a lasting impact—and those types of projects always stand out and stick with you.
📚 What are you currently learning or trying to get better at?
Right now I'm learning more about growing my own food and fermentation. I'm currently creating my first ginger bug so that I can start making fermented drinks. I would really like to cut back on my dependency on grocery stores and really tap more into local food. I'm also learning more about how AI is shifting SEO — thankfully the way I learned SEO makes it easy to transition into the new world of online optimization.
🌈 What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Comparison is the thief of joy. I try not to focus on what people around me are doing or what they have but instead focus on what I can do and how I can show up. Rather than competing with other people, I simply focus on being a better version of myself each and every day. Because if I'm always focusing on my own growth, I'm never really failing.
Need a hand?
Grapevine is here to help, whether you need a pro to take marketing off your to-do list, or just want strategy and coaching so you can achieve better results on your own. We serve all varieties of local food folks including farms, ranches, food hubs, meat processors, retail stores, non-profits, and government entities. Get in touch!
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