Farm Support Groups Initiative
The Royal Countryside Fund is committed to helping Farm Support Groups across the UK to ensure family farms can access locally available, practical help, and opportunities to work together.
Farm Support Groups are deeply rooted within the farming communities they serve.
These local organisations are always there for farmers, providing easily accessible support and new opportunities. In 2019, feedback from our farmer networks conference showed there was a need for a central coordinator to allow these groups to share knowledge and ease collaboration. Over the past seven years, we’ve created a network of more than 40 Farm Support Groups across the UK, helping these incredible organisations to better collaborate and share knowledge, best practice and advice with each other.
members in our Farm Support Groups Initiative, reaching farmers and rural communities across the UK.
National Directory of Farm and Rural Support Groups
The directory lists regional, national and membership organisations which can provide support, advice and guidance to farming and rural communities. It also signposts to support for farmers in crisis.
Case Study
How collaboration helps farming communities
1,817 health checks
The RCF’s annual Farm Support Groups Conference provides a rare and valuable opportunity to bring together representatives of farm support groups from across the UK.
At the 2022 conference, a presentation about health checks in auction marts inspired RSABI, to establish their own version in Scotland.
After speaking with Lincolnshire Rural Support Network and Field Nurse – two Farm Support Group Initiative members, which both offer health advice for farming communities – RSABI’s Health Hut initiative launched in 2023
By operating pop-up clinics at auction marts and agricultural shows, the Heath Hut medical staff can offer farmers blood pressure checks and other physical and mental health advice to farmers who might otherwise be too busy to seek it out.
In 2025, the RCF and the Health Lottery Foundation provided further funding, helping the RSABI team to provide health checks to 1,817 farmers across Scotland.
