The Future Farming Resilience Fund has been created to help support farmers and land managers through the agricultural transition. The fund has awarded grant money to organisation that can support Farmers who receive Basic Payment Schemes.
The support is completely free and aims to help farmers and land managers learn more about:
- The impacts of reductions to direct payments on their business
- How their business models might need to adapt
- Business planning
- Performance recording
- Succession planning
Read more about the funding on the Defra FFRF web page.
In order to qualify for the free advice you must farm in England and currently be receiving BPS. Participants who have already taken part in FFRF (Initial and/or Interim Phases with any provider) or have applied for the Exit Scheme can also apply.
There are currently 12 organisations offering free business advice in Cumbria. Each organisation offers different forms of advice that can be specifically tailored to your business. You can get introductory help and information, or attend opening webinars or workshops, from multiple providers; but you should only sign up for detailed 1-to-1 support from a single provider. Read below to see which support would suit your needs best.
This is the final phase of FFRF funding and it will be running until March 2025, so be sure to consider carefully what you need over the course of the next 2 and half years. Availability with each of these organisations is first come first served, so we would recommend booking your place as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.
Organisations offering free business advice
All sectors
Email: defraffr@brown-co.com
Phone: 01480598869
A business review delivered through an on-farm visit and additional tailored advice in the 6 following areas:
- Applying budgeting and business planning tools.
- Supporting technology adoption and grant access, benchmarking performance and facilitating collaborations to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
- Identifying land or property that could generate new income or capital injections. Offering support and opinion to progress change.
- Assessing land based natural capital assets, identifying potential for enhancement and securing new income streams. Understanding how woodland, water and biodiversity can generate income as part of producing an environmental strategy for the business.
- Supporting tenants to deliver new diversifications, plan for land expansion or land reduction, work effectively with landlords and plan for succession.
- Supporting farmers to produce a GHG baseline and action plan to reduce GHG emissions and position for carbon income streams.
All sectors
Email: resilience@adas.co.uk
Phone: 03301 755839
Digital and face to face awareness events, a day of one-to-one farm business consultancy and special tailored advice in the following areas:
- Farm Business Advice: Succession; feasibility of new enterprises; farm budgeting; developing a business plan; developing a strategy or change plan
- Technical Advice: sector productivity; nutrient management; adding value
- Environmental Advice: opportunities/costs of new schemes; environmental assessments; carbon audits; interpretation of carbon footprint, carbon action planning
All sectors
Email: futurefarming@ceresrural.co.uk
Phone: 01223679679
Assessment of the current performance of the business. They will identify strengths and weaknesses, whilst also recognising the main risks and opportunities it faces. From there they can provide a clear plan of practical actions to improve business resilience.
The tailored service options include:
- Farm Resilience Report
- Carbon Audit
- Benchmarking Report
- Business Plan
- Business Review
All sectors
Email: djmc@theruralbusiness.co.uk
Phone: 01746714089
One-to-one strategic on-farm advice including:
- Analysis of your accounts and BPS as necessary
- Farm visit from a consultant
- Tailored Strategic Action Plan/Update
- Progress meetings
All sectors
Email: FBAS@gscgrays.co.uk
Phone: 03333 059 059
- Customised farm business advice to 1650 farmers in the North of England.
- Free on-farm business reviews to assess goals for next 5-10 years.
- Follow up consultancy
- Specialist support services
- On farm workshops, events and webinars
- Business development groups
Livestock sector
Email: jhadwin@jhagriconsultancy.co.uk
Phone: 077391 76667
One-on-one advice on helping you to understand:
- What will change and when
- The impacts on your business
- How you might reduce reliance on current direct payments
They offer a simple, yet flexible approach including:
- A Farm Business Review to identify your objectives and opportunities
- Cashflow and budgeting (optional)
- Technical help and advice (optional) e.g. nutrition, grassland management, environmental scheme options.
All sectors
Email: keith@laurencegould.com
Phone: 07968 412052
- 12 webinars
- 300 one-to-one first farm visits
- 200 one-to-one second farm visits
- 900 carbon audits
All sectors
Email: futurefarming@niab.com
Phone: 01223 342 289
Farmer workshops to explore the impacts of direct payment reductions and options for change;
- One-to-one support to develop structured change management plans
- Targeted workshops and a resource library on financial, technical and well-being support, to aid change planning
- In-depth appraisals to address specific issues
- Peer to-peer interaction to share experiences
Dairy, Sheep and Beef sectors
Email: sandra.callwood@genusplc.com
Phone: 07971 118688
On-farm visits from a consultant to discuss one of the following topics:
- Farm Payments Review (to help you understand the full range of ongoing subsidies and payments available to your business; this may also include geographical specific revenue from water companies for example.)
- Nutrient Management Planning & slurry storage – addressing capacity to drive the use of slurry as a nutrient, including the use of cloud-based software free for the first year.
- Animal Health Audit (Dairy only) completing diagnostics to make recommendations to improve health & productivity.
- Financial Accounts Review including benchmarking, trends analysis and partial budgeting solutions
- Carbon foot printing and assessment
- Workforce support and planning
All sectors
Email: ffrf@ricardo.com
Phone: 01235 753530
- One-to-one business resilience audits
- One-to-one environmental sustainability audits
- Follow-up support
- Online events and podcasts
- Workshops
- Self-help training portal
Dairy, Beef and Sheep sector
Email: project@countrysidefund.org.uk
Phone: 07551 848892
Deliver a flexible and engaging programme of:
- Workshops
- Online learning
- Signposting
- 1:1 support
- Peer networking
- Learning
Organic, low input and in-conversion farms
Email: producer.support@soilassociation.org
Phone: 0117 314 5199
- Workshops
- Webinars
- One-to-one sessions and advice
- Farm visits
