Farm Resilience Programme

The Business Health Check tool has been created for The Royal Countryside Fund with The Anderson’s Centre. It has been developed with your business in mind to help you get a better understanding of the financial performance of your on-farm enterprises.

Each farm business will complete the health check with the support from a farm secretary at the start of the programme, and the data required should be readily available in your financial accounts. After completion, you will receive a detailed benchmark report of your business, along with an update on the UK farming sector profitability and performance.

The first workshop will provide you with a good understanding of farm financial accounts and will offer some suggestions to aid with your record keeping. The Anderson’s Centre will go through the group’s results from the Business Health Check, identifying strengths and areas of possible improvement. Please note, all data is anonymised using a code system and often other data is added in. This benchmarking exercise will help you highlight your own strengths and weaknesses to complete an action plan.

The workshop regularly scores excellent feedback from participating farmers: “The session on benchmarking was so interesting – I’d never done anything like that before, and it really makes you take a look at your business, as well as thinking about how you could apply the cost saving techniques. It’s been a real learning curve, and so helpful to break down the business into its parts.”

The workshop will support farmers in ‘speaking the language of finance’. Discussions will include the merits of managing accounts, benefits of benchmarking, unlocking the potential of online accountancy software, budgeting, jargon busting and relationships with their bank manager/accountant.

This workshop will outline the broader picture and explain the drivers behind a focus on the environment within agriculture, and how family farms fit into this. Next, it will explore the current and new opportunities specific to the country, and how to engage in them. Finally, it will explore local farm level opportunities that could practically and finally benefit this business.

Planning for your future will delve into the subject of succession. Each member of the family will explore their goals and ambitions and ways to communicate within the family business to ensure the next generation have the skills to take the business forward.

“The succession planning workshop helped as our son is keen to take over, however that won’t be for a few years, but it encouraged us to talk with our landlord who has reassured us they would be happy for him to take over in due course. This gives us the peace of mind to invest in the farm knowing that our children will be able to gain from it in the future.”

This workshop will help farmers and crofters to understand the importance of protecting and preserving your physical and mental wellbeing and appreciating the importance of mental wellbeing and the ways it can impact on the industry. Farmers will learn to recognise the signs and symptoms of someone struggling with their mental health and consider ways to begin a conversation around mental health and how to refer someone for help.