Plan early to take advantage of grant applications

Head of agriculture for Virgin Money Brian Richardson highlights that advance planning and preparation will maximise your chance of successful grant applications. Considerable change is coming and doing nothing is not an option.It is essential to use the time now to review your business and to fully understand how you can safeguard it for the future.Government grants can play a profoundly important part in this process and it is worth understanding where each one could dovetail with your future business plan.Defra has been very clear that to help farmers adapt and change to the post-Brexit environment, a number of grants will also be made available in parallel to these new schemes, and these will include a focus on productivity. With full details of the schemes not yet known, I expect many will say planning for the future remains difficult.Though what we do know quite clearly is the direction that policy will take, and how monies will be directed in the future. So, with this in mind, looking at your farm's future plan is arguably more important than ever, with particular emphasis on the next five years as we move away from Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to a UK designed policy with a focus on public good.Now, farmers need to really consider factors such as what proportion of the farm will be part of an ELM scheme, where opportunities to improve output may lie, and what will need to be done to achieve the farming industry's net zero objectives.SignpostedDefra has signposted a series of grants that will soon become available, including the Future Farm Resilience Fund.This grant is perhaps the easiest to contemplate, with payments available of up to £1,000 for professional advice to support you in that planning process, and to look at business improvement.While not an insignificant amount, this funding should not be seen as a one-off exercise, but rather the start of a process that continues over time as the future direction of farming develops.Having a well thought out plan will be critically important and such external help can assist you in both reviewing current processes, and in offering a comprehensive understanding of future opportunities.Thinking again about planning and undertaking a carbon audit will help you understand where your farm is at the present time in relation to its carbon usage, and will highlight how you can start to address some of those challenges as part of your farm's future strategy.The good news is that undertaking a carbon audit will also help with identifying opportunities to become more productive and efficient, so making it another tool to help future-proof your business.It is going to become the norm to understand how your farm performs on its carbon emissions, so getting a carbon audit done sooner rather than later will be another particularly useful tool as you look to plan out your farm's future.