Northern Lights – shining bright and leading the way
By Allister Nixon, CEO of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, a registered charity and organiser of the Great Yorkshire Show.
This week’s Mind Your Head campaign from the Farm Safety Foundation (Yellow Wellies) is such an important initiative, and the Yorkshire Agricultural Society is delighted to be lending its support again.
As a registered charity, the Society takes a leading role in supporting the professional development and wellbeing of people who work in this great industry across the North of England.
Volatility of marketplaces, weather events, disease risk and changing politics has always been inherent in agriculture and so the vast breadth of organisations and charities that serve the industry have, and will continue to, play an important role.
Working together
A key pillar of the work of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society is to support wellbeing.
We do this in many ways, from hosting the Great Yorkshire Show which brings farmers together in celebration, to the Society’s many other year-round activities, led by our farming networks.
We are working with partners to roll out a two-year programme to support farmer welfare thanks to £150,000 funding from the DEFRA Farmer Welfare Fund. The Society and partners, The Farmer Network Ltd in Cumbria, the Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland, Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Services (UTASS) based in the Durham Dales and Field Nurse, which operates across Lancashire and North Yorkshire, are all working to deliver activities to support farmer welfare using this funding.
As well as training, the Society and its partners have committed to deliver 14 farming focused first aid training courses. There will be support too for groups, such as women in farming, the over 50s and younger farmers over the age of 28 who are too old to attend Young Farmer Club events, including 38 social events, lunch clubs, farm visits and other trips.
Regular outreach clinics have been up at seven auction marts across Cumbria, Yorkshire and Durham to provide useful information about farm support schemes, to help farmers access their Rural Payments Agency account and to signpost to other support.
One-to-one advice will be provided to 22 farm businesses, and four workshops will help farming communities become more resilient by focusing on topics such as succession planning and health and safety on farms.
Field Nurse has recruited two more Field Nurses and an extra trailer to extend its service into two new auction marts in Cumbria and North Yorkshire, and to expand its’ ‘Farming Stronger for Longer’ campaign into Cumbria and Yorkshire.
Supporting well being
The Society organises many events every year to encourage farmers to get together, from knowledge exchange events such as our Future Farmers of Yorkshire network’s debate evenings, to conferences held by our Farmer Scientist Network and Yorkshire Food Farming and Rural Network. Each event is an invitation to get off-farm, make connections and take away forward-thinking messages, all of which can do wonders for wellbeing.
There are activities to reach every demographic. For example, our Women In Farming Network is dedicated to connecting rural women and holds and annual Autumn Gathering with inspiring speakers and networking opportunities.
A relatively new initiative of our Yorkshire Rural Support Network is the Yorkshire Farmers Club which has been set up to connect members of the farming community aged 50-plus. It aims to reduce social isolation and loneliness, creating opportunities for likeminded people to reconnect or forge new friendships. The Club offers exclusive organised visits at intervals throughout the year. Next up is a visit to Wensleydale Creamery on Thursday 27th March.
The Yorkshire Agricultural Society has also sponsored Nuffield Farming Scholarships since 1980 and our 2025 Scholar is Lucia Slack, a mental health nurse in Cumbria, studying ‘Addressing Suicide in Agriculture: Supporting and Preventing the Biggest Hidden Danger Today’.
A refresh for the future
To better tell the story of the Society’s year-round work, the Society and its family of businesses has had a rebrand. The refresh nods to the tradition and heritage of the Society, whilst giving a contemporary feel and more synergy between all parts of the commercial businesses and events at the Showground.
So much more than an aesthetic makeover, the clearer message of what we do as a charity makes the Showground an even more attractive place to hold a huge variety of events, and in turn, positions the Society to bolster its work to deliver activities and initiatives that benefit farmers and their families.
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