Farming connect

[brynseiri]

Having watched the Welsh farming program, I was amazed that farming connect sourced a grant to pay someone to write a simple business plan for a small start up enterprise. Am I alone in thinking simple business plans are all mumbo jumbo until you actually start trading, because your trade then determines the changes to the business plan, in most cases rendering the original obsolete? So why pay someone to write one for you? And when they asked the bloke where he saw his business in a few years time the answer was "I dunno"! A mate brought this up on Saturday, and also he'd been to a farming connect demo on how to divert rain water from shed downspouts in to tanks to harvest rainwater, where all these farmers were stood gawping at a guy showing them how to divert water in to a drum from the downspout as if they'd never seen the idea and concept before! He got home and told his mate about it who then goes "Duw, that's clever, I never thought of that before...." "Oooo Don't you fu#king start as well!" We both arrived at the conclusion that farming connect harvest this grant money for their own good, making jobs for themselves. Do they as a body do anything to carry business forward, like arrange industry contacts to sell produce, and bring profit in through the front door?

 

[dolf_lundgren]

Business plan is what it says it is. A plan, sometimes things go to plan sometimes they don't. However it is usually best to start with some sort of plan no matter what you do. Also if need anyone else to work with you to get where you want to go (lender, land owner even family) then you need to show them some sort of evidence that you have thought about what you are doing and it might work. If you know how to do one then do it yourself, I agree you don't need to pay someone to do it but obviously some folk don't.

On the rainwater demo, obviolsy some folk saw value in it and learnt from it. Why did your mate go to it?

I don't really know anything about Farm Connect but I do know a lot of farmers need advice for their business and if they can get it grant funded they are more likely to get the advice. What is the aim of Farm Connect? What do they say they do? Then measure do they do it?

 

[brynseiri]

Correct in that you need a directional plan, but there's no need IMO to employ the services of a consultant to do so. And if no farmer on his own two feet has never thought of harvesting rainwater from buildings then as an industry we are shot no? My gripe is, this quango is mis allocating taxpayers money just to keep its employees in a job. The business plan for the enterprise in question would have taken anyone with half an idea how to turn £1 in to £3 an afternoon of brain storming. If the funding was spent on introducing producers to potential customers with a view to gaining supply contracts it would indeed benefit the system. And that is the unfortunate weak link in the chain.

 

[linga]

Banks and other lenders often require a " professionally " written business plan. In the same way they require a " professionally" crafted valuation ( even if a valuation was done a month or so previously for another matter)

If you have to have a professional business plan you might as well take a grant for it.
It's all jobs for the boys in the end but what can you do. ..apart from don't borrow

 

[Yale]

Farming connect we're trying to tempt farmer to go into milk with workshops on the subject last summer.

 

[beefboy]

Farming connect is very good if you want funded (was 80%) skills training/certificates, such as sprayer use, chainsaws, telehandlers etc.

 

[d williams]

Farming connect is very good if you want funded (was 80%) skills training/certificates, such as sprayer use, chainsaws, telehandlers etc.

More about jobs for the boys and girls running it man I was on sprayer course with was in his 70 no need for him to be there just for a certificate

 

[Tarw Coch]

They were hardly th

Farming connect we're trying to tempt farmer to go into milk with workshops on the subject last summer.

they were hardly the only so called experts advocating this along with the ones encouraging rapid expansion, pity none of them were able to comprehend and advise on supply and demand and it' effect.

 

[brynseiri]

Farming connect is very good if you want funded (was 80%) skills training/certificates, such as sprayer use, chainsaws, telehandlers etc.

You are 100% correct there

 

[brynseiri]

Banks and other lenders often require a " professionally " written business plan. In the same way they require a " professionally" crafted valuation ( even if a valuation was done a month or so previously for another matter)

If you have to have a professional business plan you might as well take a grant for it.
It's all jobs for the boys in the end but what can you do. ..apart from don't borrow

That depends on the scale of the enterprise, for a small shoestring start up on farm, with minimal borrowing you can pretty much do a business plan on the back of an old envelope.

 

[linga]

Yes you can. But if the banks and associated professions smell easy money they will take it if they can.
Bearing in mind the decline in milk price over the last year what value a business plan professional or not that was prepared last year. Think any size of business could do it on a back of an envelope. !

 

[neilo]

That depends on the scale of the enterprise, for a small shoestring start up on farm, with minimal borrowing you can pretty much do a business plan on the back of an old envelope.

Pretty sure that you need to have a professionally (by someone that is on an approved list) drawn up business plan to get on quite a few government schemes, such as organic conversion. FC just administer the grant funding to cover much of the cost of getting that done. They are administering the money modulated from SFP, so the gravy train won't be slowing down any time soon.

Agree it's p*ss poor if you can't draw up your own business plan, and that the value of them is probably less than the paper you write them on in the real world.

Now, this idea of catching water of a roof then........

 

[brynseiri]

It's just frustrating to me that a body such as farming connect, and I'll use this word carefully, "wastes" money allocated to them by holding days such as "how to turn a downspout into a tank instead of the drain" when they should be working flat out to find markets for agricultural production in their area, it's all well and good trying to show farmers how to save money, but honestly, if using rainwater off a roof instead of mains means the difference between in the black or in the read to some, then they are up sh!t creek to be honest.

 

[7610 super q]

As said, jobs for the boys (and girls). Not a patch on the old (free) ADAS service. You could go into the office in the local town, and get good down to earth advice on anything from growing strawberries to rearing turkeys.
And in Wales they kept pushing organic production, till it got over done and went pear shaped. Then they started pushing free range eggs till that went tits up. Then they gave out funds willy-nilly for buildings and earned themselves the nickname "shed connect" (one redeeming feature maybe)
Maybe I'm old and grumpy, but I don't rate farming connect much at all.