Farming Business Support and Development Project

North Yorkshire

Bob Baker, Graham Bulmer and Pauline Broadwith of the Farming Business Support and Development Project work with farming families and rural business people. Providing discrete and flexible support, they work to ensure that people in rural areas across North Yorkshire receive the right support and advice from the right people and agencies.

"Real help and support to those experiencing the challenges of change and uncertainty"
Howard Petch, Commission for Rural Communities
and Farm Crisis Network

The work is:

• engaging with the 'hard to reach' in order to access business support, skills and knowledge transfer in innovative ways
• through one to one mentoring and coaching
• through providing individual skills needs assessment
• topical workshops on relevant themes and issues (e.g. managing bluetongue)
• localised events and groupwork
• engaging individuals and businesses through marts, shows etc.

"Work delivered by the CRC's rural development officers is having a direct economic impact on farming businesses....it offers quite intensive, seamless/no wrong door delivery"
Extract from Yorkshire Forward's independent evaluation by MTL January 2007

They are based at Thirsk Rural Business Centre and Auction Mart. Bob (pictured left at an auction mart) is employed full-time, and Graham and Pauline part-time. They all have farming backgrounds. They are supported by Clare Wise, also based at Thirsk who works part time as the rural project administrator.

I am regularly in touch with them and value their work with farmers. This is a wonderful initiative
with the farming community and churches reaching out to others."
Anne McIntosh MP, Vale of York

The project was established in 2003 as a partnership project with Farm Crisis network. The success of the project in engaging with farmers, particularly livestock and especially small upland farms, provided a foundation for a successful application to LANTRA in 2008. The funding from the Landskills element of the Rural Development Programme for England (a European fund managed by Yorkshire Forward) will allow farmers to access to the help, advice, skills and training they need, at a time when farmers face significant difficulties. To see more about the LANTRA LAndSkills programme click on the logo. 
 

South Pennines.

Through funding from Lantra and support from other areas  the project has recently expanded to the South Pennines area where Jonathan Charlesworth will be aiming to establish a level of support for farmers in this area.

Thoughts from a Northern Mart: November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 Rogation Sunday 2008 Harvest Thoughts 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 March 2009 Harvest 2009 November 2009 February 2010, March 2010, April 2010, May 2010, June 2010, July 2010

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