The Future Farming Resilience Fund project is focused on farmers in the Cotswolds/Wessex areas. NIAB is working with about 100 farmers through a series of workshops and on-farm visits covering the impacts of changes to direct payments, exploring options for farming system change and developing change management skills.
The challenges caused by COVID-19, extreme weather events and the forthcoming changes to agricultural support may result in many farmers in England needing to adapt their business models and carefully consider options for the future.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Future Farming Resilience Fund will provide support via NIAB to Cotswold and Wessex-based farmers and land managers as they prepare for the agricultural transition. This project will provide information, tools, advice, and support for farming businesses throughout this period of change. The programme will run until 28 February 2022.
Other providers are also available; a full list with further detail is provided on the Defra farming blog.
Aim
NIAB aims to provide each farmer with a toolkit to plan, implement then monitor changes at small-scale before acting to roll-out change across the business, and to facilitate the use of the toolkit on-farm, whilst also ensuring that it is in good shape for wider roll-out.
Workshops
Workshops were held in November 2021 in Gloucestershire, Somerset and Hampshire and a virtual workshop via Zoom. The initial workshops allowed farmers to quantify the business impacts of direct payment reductions and explore options for change.
The virtual workshop was recorded and is now available to view.
Part one: Future farming resilence fund
Part two: The changes farmers are making on farm
Part three: Planning change - concepts and tools
The workshop is supported by a workbook, which gives the key slides and some follow up materials.
We also ask all participants to complete the registration and feedback form.
We are able to provide 1-to-1 change support for up to 50 attendees (in person or virtual) in the Cotswold and Wessex areas. These visits from the NIAB and TAG Consulting agronomy team will take place in December 2021/January 2022. So if you are interested please let us know quickly so we can schedule a visit with you. You can only receive support of this kind from one of the Defra providers in this interim phase – Defra will use your SBI number to make the check – so if you’d like to register either complete the full registration and feedback or email elizabeth.stockdale [at] niab.com with your name, contact details and SBI.
Follow-up workshops will be held in February 2022 to support peer-peer learning. The registration information will be provided to all who have attended a workshop or engaged with Farming Resilience Fund support via NIAB.