FAMILY farm businesses in the north of England are being invited to take part in the fourth year of the highly successful Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme, run by The Prince’s Countryside Fund.

Proven to help family farms improve their way of working, the programme will provide free business support, skills and planning tuition, and one-to-one guidance to 20 small livestock and mixed family farm businesses.

The programme will be running in Yorkshire and Lancashire and will also be available to National Trust tenants in the Lake District.

Alan, a farmer from Cumbria, who took part in the programme last year, said: “The programme is helping us to achieve our goals of farming full time and growing our business – we’re learning all the time, future proofing ourselves.

“This is a time of huge uncertainty, so we need to listen to others and take as much help as we can get.”

He added: “I’d definitely recommend taking part.

“If you’re prepared to move forward, it’s the perfect opportunity.

“We’re all going to have to get better and smarter with our farms.”

The programme aims to tackle some of the biggest challenges and uncertainties being faced by family farm businesses across the UK.

Developed off the back of The Prince’s Dairy Initiative, the multi-million pound programme is now entering its fourth year and planning to recruit its 1,000th farmer.

Farmers are given the skills to evaluate their viability and make informed decisions about the future by using the Business Health Check Tool.

The programme also brings together like-minded family farm enterprises in local networks so they can review their current activity, and identify opportunities and improvements that can be made on-farm to build resilience.

Claire Saunders, pictured, director of the Prince’s Countryside Fund said: “The Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme has gone from strength to strength over the past three years and is continually responding to the unique challenges facing farming families.

“We are introducing the Managing Your Farmed Environment workshop this year, which will help farmers to be more informed about their own environmental assets and opportunities for delivering public goods.

“The workshop will encourage a cultural change in the way farmers think about their contribution to the environment and in the opportunities for delivering public goods.  

“Our partnership with the National Trust will help us to reach even more farming families and we are very grateful for their support.

“We would like to thank all our sponsors for their support of The Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme.”

To find out more about The Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme and register, visit princescountrysidefund.org.uk/farmresilience by August 30.