25 Jun 2019

Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme open to applicants

Farmers are being offered free one-to-one business planning advice and group workshops through support from the Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme.

Applications have just opened for this year’s scheme – now in its fourth year – which focuses on business skills training to help farms make changes to build business resilience.

Aimed predominantly at dairy, beef and sheep farms, the programme will run in 15 locations across the UK and up to 20 farming families will be asked to join the initiative in each of the locations, meaning there is a total of 300 available spaces across the country.

New to this year, The National Trust has announced it wants to sponsor 60 of its tenants to take part in the scheme.

How the programme works

Farms sign up as a family business and the whole family are invited to get involved. Support comes in the form of one-to-one on-farm advice, as well as a series of seven group workshops delivered by professional consultants.

Topics covered include benchmarking costs, business planning and managing succession. A new addition to the programme this year will be a workshop on managing the farming environment.

The aim is to encourage a cultural change in the way farmers think about their contribution to the environment and in the opportunities for delivering public goods.

Locations

• Four groups aimed at National Trust tenants located in Devon/Somerset, the Lake District, Peak District and Llyn Peninsula/Snowdonia National Park
• Other locations are: 
• Aberdeenshire
• Carmarthenshire
• Cornwall
• Kent 
• Lancashire 
• Norfolk 
• Northern Ireland
• Orkney 
• Shropshire
• South Hampshire
• Yorkshire

Farmers need to register their interest here to take part in the programme by 30 August 2019.

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