News from the RCF

As our farming programmes get underway across rural Britain, we’re proud to share stories from previous participants who are building resilience and sustainability on their family farm. With updates on soil health initiatives, insights from a rural enterprise conference and recent events with partners, we reflect on the challenges still facing rural communities alongside the progress we’re making to provide them with practical solutions.

Read on to find out more!

Inspiring growth and innovation for family farms

Louise and Stuart, who farm in Aberdeenshire, joined our Farm Resilience Programme (FRP) to connect with farmers from diverse backgrounds, share knowledge, and gain insights to enhance their mixed farm of arable, suckler cows, and store lambs. They valued the expert-led sessions and speakers who deeply inspired them and through workshops like "Reducing Waste, Reducing Cost," they made practical changes, such as improving soil maintenance for crop health.

“I thought the FRP gave us so much opportunity for personal development as well as business development. I think that is what we need to do - to grow ourselves to then impact our business.”

Help your farm become more resilient

We recently announced new locations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for this year’s Farm Resilience Programme, which is open to dairy and livestock family farms and provides free business and environment skills training to help you and your family farm, just like it has for Louise and Stuart.

The programme takes a whole-farm and whole-family approach to supporting you in becoming more profitable and resilient, with farms seeing benefits of up to £9,800 per year after taking part.

Helping farms save money with soil

The session kicked off with a presentation from Farm Carbon Toolkit to discuss different indicators of soil health and the importance of regular testing on-farm. The day then concluded with a farm walk nearby, comparing soil from different fields and looking at worm counts.

– Christina Hutchings, Group Coordinator

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to our partner, Barbour. The team there has launched an amazing collection of bespoke re-loved jackets, which are being auctioned off to raise money for The Royal Countryside Fund and were recently displayed in a pop-up cube exhibition at Covent Garden piazza in London.

The collection includes designs from Paul Smith, David Gandy, GANNI, Baracuta, JB Gill, Aardman, Brompton and Roksanda!

National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise

In October, we attended the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise event in Newcastle, which was chaired by former RCF Chair, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, and aimed to shine a spotlight on how businesses in rural areas are responding to the challenges affecting the UK economy and policy landscape. This event highlighted to us that challenges facing rural communities including poor public transport, lack of affordable housing and lack of suitable apprenticeships delay innovation in rural areas. There is also a need to incubate enterprising approaches and ideas through flexible, appropriate finance, which the RCF strives to support through our rural grants programme.

We will soon be announcing our next grant round on our website.

Find out more

Are you a Friend of the Countryside?

Our work is only made possible by people who care deeply about the countryside and its future. By becoming a Friend of the Countryside from just £3 a month, you can help ensure we can continue to meet the needs of farming and rural communities across the UK.

How can your donation help?

£3 ensures a farmer has access to telephone advice from one of the Farm Support Groups in our network.

£8 could pay for one elderly resident to use a rural transport initiative supported by our grants programme to attend a crucial medical appointment.

£15 invested by our Farm Resilience Programme could see a £45 return for farmers.