New project helps farmers plan ahead and stay resilient through change

A new project led by national rural support charity The Farming Community Network (FCN) will help farmers in England and Wales plan ahead for the future.

FCN’s ‘Time to Plan’ campaign helps to raise awareness about the importance of forward planning and encourages farmers to prepare for change from both personal and business perspectives.

A lack of medium and long-term business planning and later life planning are contributory factors in many cases that present to FCN each year. This can often lead to increased stress as well as contributing to family relationship issues, financial problems and difficulties in managing the farm in older age.

FCN CEO Jude McCann (pictured), said: “British farming faces an uncertain future, and the need for farmers to plan ahead and know their options is vital. Taking time to plan ahead can help farmers to remain resilient through change – this could include managing the handover between generations, or being prepared for unexpected challenges like Brexit, Covid-19 or serious weather events.

“Time To Plan will see FCN working with a range of industry partners to develop helpful resources about planning ahead which will be available to the farming community through our free FarmWell platform. A core part of FCN’s mission is to help improve farmers’ personal and business resilience, and this project plays a key role in this objective.”

As part of the project, FCN will be running an awareness campaign from October 2020 – March 2021.

Each month content will be created in partnership with other organisations focusing on different themes, including: managing through change successfully; planning for the unexpected; diversification; the new post-Brexit support regime; succession planning and retirement; and wellbeing and safety.

In the longer term, FCN will be developing a ‘Planning Toolkit’ to help farming families take positive steps to prepare for the future, building on FCN’s FarmWell (https://farmwell.org.uk/) and FarmWell Wales (https://farmwell.wales/) initiatives.

To find out more about the project visit: https://farmwell.org.uk/time-to-plan/

FCN is keen to work with industry partners for this project. Please contact mark@fcn.org.uk if you would like to get involved and share expertise around planning ahead.