Key conclusions from a Nuffield Farming Scholarship undertaken by Duncan Rawson, project manager for EFFP, show that through collaboration, growers and farmers can generate value and gain scale required to raise finance and investment.
UK growers can learn from abroad and the experience to develop structures to help meet demands to financial challenges.
Rawson explained: “There is great potential for farmers to generate value within supply chains, but in order to this they must become more involved by integrating themselves in ways that they have not done before.
“There are many ways this can be achieved, however for most the answer must be to work more closely together, to collaborate, in order to gain the scale necessary to invest into marketing and processing capacity.”
According to Rawson, observations from around the world indicate that in the majority of cases the mechanism used to facilitate this is the Farmer Controlled Business (FCB).
However, while examples from overseas make a persuasive case for the FCB, applying the model itself will not achieve success. “Like any other business an FCB needs to have in place a robust strategy, together with the capability and capital to deliver it,” he suggested.
“While it is accepted that the development of strategy and capability is crucial to the success of the FCB sector, it can be argued that the most fundamental restraint to FCB development in the UK is likely to be access to capital.”
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