Facilitating rural business

Last year I wrote a post about Business mentoring and asked the questions:

Who are the mentors for the agricultural industry?

Where can young or not so young people in the industry find independent and appropriate advice and support?

One year later I am still asking myself those questions. If you are a young farmer going into the industry where can you access knowledge and experience to stop you “re-inventing” the wheel? I have always been an advocate of The Princes Trust and how they help young people starting out with a business, hoping to develop a community project or just seeking to get back into work. Maybe they could have a role?

 The Fresh Start Initiative that aims to offer assistance to those developing new farming businesses and is a college based scheme. and has moved a long way in twelve months. However, I feel that we also need to have a network of facilitators that can help to set up farming discussion groups/continuous learning groups. These groups would be practical, informal, hands-on and self-driven. Discussion groups are springing up in all regions of the country, but it would be good to have a network of people that can help start the groups and work with them to set the foundations. Perhaps Defra would provide initial funding for such a project?

Comments

[westydexta]

Fresh Start is an interesting case. Steve Lindsay encourages the development of academies that can access funding via their own sources (regional charities, work in-kind) in the first instance.
It is therefore difficult to determine the extent to which Fresh Start is actually funded by DEFRA. Might be a good FOI request.
The development of other agricultural discussion groups is very positive in my opinion and likely to attract funding via the Rural Hubs and ultimately the Regional Development Agencies (AWM in the West Midlands region of the UK).
The key point would to be avoidance of re-inventing the wheel. There are lots of discussion groups out there, many of which are "club-based" and therefore restrictive to membership. Last year WM Young Farmers implemented a series of evening discussion groups to push this concept, but it was limited by 1)Lack of debating experience and therefore tendency for a few loud individuals to take-over and 2) Sponsors of the event leading it to become more of an advertising event.
It might be an idea to consider an "agricultural brainstrust" concept that runs properly managed debates. This could fit well with Agricultural Colleges and Universities nationally.
Something of this type should not be age-ist as the wider the age group, the broader the experience of each event and the more scope there is for mentoring, etc.

[Louise Manning]

I really agree with the points that you raise. We need to break new ground with mentoring, coaching and facilitating in the agricultural community. There is a whole range of tools that can be used to link farm based businesses and help to drive knowledge transfer. I think discussion groups that are run by experienced facilitators who can control the "eager beavers" and "loud lions" do have great potential in helping farmers to share good ideas and best practice.