North East Farmers Training Together To Be The Best
A GROUP of forward-thinking farmers have received funding to take part in innovative training sessions to help them remain at the top of their game.
Border Crop Management (BCM) has been awarded over 12,000 from Landkskills North East, part of the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE), which is managed by Lantra, the Sector Skills Council for the environmental and land-based industries, on behalf of One NorthEast.
The money will enable the 15-strong group of farmers to take part in three training sessions over the next year to help keep them at the cutting-edge of arable technology whilst sharing their own experiences to help make their individual businesses stronger with considerations for the environment.
John Baker-Cresswell is co-ordinator of BCM, and owner of Newlands Farm, Belford, Northumberland, and said: We are all arable farmers with similar skills and all have a common interest of doing our jobs better.
What is unusual about us is that we are an exclusive group of like-minded farmers receiving a high level of training to help move us forward dramatically to improve our individual businesses. Essentially the training sessions are a free for all in terms of knowledge transfer as we all trust one another enough to be honest and open.
If it wasnt for the funding then BMI would not be able to train as often as we feel is beneficial to share this best practice with one another so this funding is very important to us.
BMI was established in the early 1990s with an aim of raising standards and has gone from strength to strength since then, comprising 15 farmers across Northumberland and the Borders, who are all employers.
The farmers will receive training from Crop Management Information Ltd who aims to improve their economic and environmental performance by updating the knowledge of the relevant decision makers in agronomy.
This involves refreshing age-old skills and introducing state-of-the-art information and techniques. The course covers subjects as diverse as plant genetics and physiology, crop rotation selection, soil fertility and care, weed, insect and disease control.
To save participants time the bulk of the training is delivered on BCM members premises and costs of the training are kept low by accommodating trainers in members homes.
Simon Henderson, LandSkills North East steering group chair, said: Farmers are notoriously difficult to convince that training is important enough to take time away from their farms but its very rare that people from this group dont attend booked training which speaks volumes regarding how important the farmers rate the sessions.
Members rate this way of learning as it has a knock-on effect of raising the quality of decision making on the farm. This in turn has the effect of improving the economic performance of the business which benefits the region and of paramount importance to these farmers is ensuring that adverse environmental impacts are kept to a minimum.
I would encourage others who have similar business groups to get together to look at their training needs and consider the benefits that can be gained from such an innovative practice that provides a win-win situation for all involved.
The Rural Development Programme for England 2007-2013 is jointly funded by Defra and the European Union, with the aim of delivering targeted support to rural businesses and communities. It is managed in North East England by One North East, Natural England and the Forestry Commission.
The RDPE investment being managed by One North East combines larger projects to help many businesses in different sectors of the rural economy – including bioenergy and land-based skills, and projects adding value to agricultural and forestry products – with smaller investments to help individual businesses to start-up, grow or diversify, and support to develop more sustainable rural communities.
RDPE Business Support is part of Solutions for Business, the Governments package of publicly funded support products offering help to companies to start, grow and succeed. Solutions for Business makes it easier for companies to get the advice and assistance that they need.
For further information on the full package of support, visit www.businesslink.gov.uk/northeast.or call Tel: 0845 600 9006.
For more information on RDPE in North East England, visit: www.rdpenortheast.co.uk
For more information on RDPE, visit:
http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rurdev/index_en.htm
http://www.defra.gov.uk/rural/rdpe/index.htm