The Prince’s Countryside Fund is inviting 300 more small farm businesses to take part in the second year of the highly successful The Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme.

The programme will take place in 15 new locations throughout the UK, including the Isle of Arran, the Durham Dales and Gloucestershire. Applications to take part open on September 1 and close on October 31.

Proven to help small farms improve their way of working, and created through the vision of HRH The Prince of Wales, the charity’s Patron, the initiative will provide free business support and one-to-one guidance to 300 small and medium sized family farm businesses across the UK. 

The programme is intended to equip them with the tools they need to evaluate their viability and long-term sustainability as well as supporting them to make key decisions about the future direction of their business. 

Farmers who completed the first year of the programme have said they feel much more confident about the future of their business. Richard, a farmer in Northumberland, said: “I’d definitely recommend the programme to others. It provides a series great debates and discussion. Hearing the ways other people ran their farms was fantastic, and with help from The Prince’s Countryside Fund we’ve now established our own local network, which is great as farming can be so isolating.” 

Liz and Bob, who farm in Cornwall, agreed: “Everything keeps changing, the paperwork involved and other things. There’s always something to learn from other people, whether that’s our peers in farming, or the consultants and professionals who lead the programme.”