Research findings help struggling farm businesses to succeed.

Professors Michael Winter, Matt Lobley and Dr Rebecca Wheeler’s research on the challenges faced by contemporary British agriculture have been presented in a volume that reports on crucial projects undertaken by the team. The Changing World of Farming in Brexit UK, published in 2019, advances insights and impactful proposals that have benefited the Farming sector. Their research was implemented by the Prince’s Countryside Fund (PCF) and Defra providing a lifeline for small and medium size farms. The Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme (PFRP) granting an annual investment of £0.5m since 2016, to help struggling farms; and Defra’s Future Farming Resilience Fund that has committed £9m for the 2020-2024 period.

Despite farming contributing billions to the national economy; in 2018 one in five farms faced significant survival challenges, with many being hugely dependent on public finance that is due to be phased out in 2027. Research undertook by Professor Winter and colleagues proposed solutions to challenges those vulnerable businesses faced, from low level access to services, lone working, poor mental health, and disenchantment with being a farmer. A regional coordinator for the PFRP praised the scheme for helping to develop a Farm Women’s Group, adding “…to see them all talking together, sat round the table, I thought was brilliant because they would have never done that, and we would’ve never got them round that table without the Resilience Programme.”

In 2015, as part of Defra’s £4.5m programme of research: Sustainable Intensification Research Platform, the research team interviewed 244 farmers representing England and Wales. The findings were further examined thanks to a research project for the PCF in 2015-2016 (£60k) with a focus on improving the prospects of small to medium family farms in Britain. Their bast data gathering included a call for evidence, stakeholder workshops, key interviews; in addition to Defra’s Farm Business Survey dataset and near 1500 responses to a 2016 postal survey. Their research revealed the nature of the growing challenges faced by farmers to develop economically resilient businesses in the context of a rapidly changing global market, among new policy and social concerns.

Despite COVID, the first 700 participants on the PFRP shared their learning with family and neighbours, creating a snowball effect that reached over 3000 farms. Nearly 60% of the participating farmers have reported improvements to their wellbeing alongside increased profits and prospects of success. In his time as Prince of Wales, HRH King Charles III said: “the Programme helps farms to change and build resilience for change in the future… [it] has had considerable success in helping farming families come together to determine the changes they need to make.”

Access to advice and information to help business take decisions, development of local networks, lifelong learning and support were part of the researchers' resilience recommendations packet for the PFRP programme. Defra relied heavily on this lead to set their own programme, a £9m Future Farming Resilience Fund, part of its Agricultural Transition plan, within the post-Brexit national roadmap. These programmes help to reverse the trends towards fewer farms by improving the conditions for the survival of remote smaller units, which in turn will deliver the government’s commitment to a technologically progressive, sustainable intensification of agriculture, alongside landscape scale delivery of public goods such as carbon storage and greater biodiversity.