Courses

Jamie Stokes has published his Nuffield Scholarship report entitled: “Doing More with Less – Learning from the small to teach the big”.  Jamie’s Scholarship was sponsored by The Worshipful Company of Farmers with Savills.

The Objective of Jamie’s Study Tour was to look at what can be learned from small-scale business and producers, including but not limited to, urban agriculture, from the perspective of a UK high efficiency large-scale arable farmer.

Jamie, who farms in Cambridgeshire, will be presenting his report at the Nuffield Farming Conference to be held in Aberdeen in November.

Jamie’s full report can be downloaded here:

Jamie Stokes – Nuffield Report – FINAL.pdf

Another successful completion of our highly regarded course, The Challenge of  Rural Leadership (2025), marks 29 years of helping develop our candidates’ personalities and business acumen as well as broaden self-confidence and communication skills.  Our candidates positively glowed with accolades about the course and cannot recommend it highly enough. Comments include “if you’ve ever had any doubts about this course, put them aside and send in an application – you won’t regret it”

The 2001 CRL course had a great three day reunion in the Scottish Borders organised by Rob and Lucy Forrest. With nine out of the eighteen course delegates able to attend and fifteen years since our last reunion we had a lot of catching up to do.

Our first visit was to Cheviot Trees, a 30 year old family business producing annually some fifteen million cell grown trees and hedging plants covering over 500 varieties.   We then went to Simpsons Malt, a 5th generation family managed and owned maltings who supply malt all over the UK and many overseas destinations.

On day two our first visit was to the Thorburn Group, a 3rd generation family business, at their new £5.3m purpose built engineering factory, manufacturing steel buildings and livestock equipment.

The final visit was to the Jim Clark Motor Museum where we were very lucky that we had a personal tour by Jim’s cousin, also a racing driver in his day. Jim was a local farmer who became World Motor Racing Champion on two occasions but was tragically killed in a race that he didn’t want to do but which was part of his contractual obligation.

Huge thanks to Rob and Lucy who not only organised the visit but also kindly provided lunch before we all set off on our journeys home.

The Worshipful Company of Farmers is delighted to announce the launch of the online application process for the 73rd Advanced Course in Agricultural Business Management (ACABM) commencing in November 2024 under the tutelage of Keith Barriball and Karen Brosnan.

Interviews, by invitation, will take place in the City of London on 3-4 July. The programme will comprise pre-residential online content delivery at the beginning of November, followed by a two-week residential programme at the Royal Agricultural University on 10-22 November inclusive, and then post-programme group Zooms in both December and February 2025. In addition, there is an opportunity for one-to-one online coaching.

More information on the 73rd course, fees and access to the online application portal is via https://www.rau.ac.uk/for-business/professional-education/acabm. Applications will close at 23:59 on 30 April. Good luck and we look forward to receiving your applications.