Make use of the last 6 months of free advice, events and support from this programme
The Farm for the Future programme is designed to provide information, support and guidance for farmers to navigate their way through the Agricultural Transition; due to changing policy, reduction and ultimate loss of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and the emergence of new Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes.
See below for our 2024 Events Programme
The programme is funded by Defra’s Future Farming Resilience Fund, and any tenant or owner-occupied farm currently in receipt of BPS in England is eligible to join for free. The Hill Farm Project is working with the Royal Countryside Fund as one of 19 delivery partners across the country who can build on their existing relationships within their farming communities, to tailor activity to local needs. This ensures that the most important issues receive the right focus and are delivered via known and trusted people.
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Now launching the final year of support, we have been delivering this programme of events each autumn/winter since 2021 including an early pilot stage . This free programme offers the chance to join meetings or events which highlight and address some of the main concerns brought about by the changes in policy from the Agricultural Transition. As this has been through continual change, its understandable that farmers may be unclear about their options.
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Our programme on Dartmoor is designed to help with this; to understand the implications to the farm business from declining BPS payments, how to identify and compare potential income from new and extended options available from Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) schemes, what's involved and how to approach these? We start with these core subjects, expanding into optional topic workshops as we progress each year.
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Having worked with over 150 Dartmoor farms so far, below is our planned programme to run from July to November 2024 - hoping to put some meat on the bones following information being released by Defra this year. These events will focus on the practicalities of comparing options and income, applications and evidence - as well as what routes are available to those already in schemes and considering how to capitalise on SFI in addition, or to transfer to what could be a better offer.
We have designed our wider events offer to be complementary and run in parallel, all of which are designed to provide insight, build knowledge and an opportunity to see or discuss practicalities first-hand.
Any farmer in receipt of BPS may continue to register their interest with us to take part in this final year of delivery. We also regularly issue updates to those involved to reflect ongoing news releases from Defra, to highlight the important points, saving you from having to read every single news release. Most of the key web links or documents are mentioned on our Resources page for easy access.
Participants are offered the option of a free one to one consultation, which covers a half day of Consultant time provided by the programme. This is currently a one-off option during the three years.
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You can sign up with us at any time - submit your interest either on the Royal Countryside Fund page or with us through all the usual contact links or via our subscription form.
