The theme set for this year’s Ulster Grassland Society (UGS) conference is ‘Setting up a farming business for the future’.
The subject matter discussed at the upcoming event reflects the growing debate on how best to attract new generations of young people into production agriculture.
The conference will take place on Tuesday, January 23 at the Dunadry Hotel, Co. Antrim.
Guest speakers on farming business
The conference will include presentations from a range of speakers with a breadth of experience, where the issues of generational change and farm family development are concerned.
The first speaker will be Dr. Shane Conway, a project manager and lecturer at the University of Galway.
Dr. Conway specialises in agricultural and rural social science, with a particular focus on the human side of farming, older farmers and intergenerational farm transfer.
His presentation to the UGS conference will focus on farmers’ attitudes to succession, based on the findings of a survey undertaken across Ireland.
In addition to his academic and research career, Shane also breeds pedigree Charolais sheep on the family farm in Co. Galway.
The next guest speaker will be Heather Wildman, who grew up on the family hill farm in the Lake District of England, and now lives in south-west Scotland.
She has over 30 years’ experience working with farmers, and now specialises in succession. At the upcoming conference, Heather will discuss many of the issues that farm families struggle with when dealing with succession.
Issues may arise from the following questions:
- When will succession happen?
- Who will succeed to the farm, or will it be sold?
- How can children be treated fairly?
- What are the family’s expectations – financial, housing, full-time/part-time?
- How does one avoid crippling the successor of the farm business with debt?
Peter Brown, chair the Agricultural Law Association (ALA) in NI, will address some of the legal aspects relating to succession.
Brown was a member of a Department of Agriculture independent review panel from 2012 to 2022, where matters relating to farm succession are concerned.
Currently, he helps develop and deliver agricultural succession planning programmes for the College of Agriculture Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE), linked to the Society of Trust Estate Practitioners (STEP).
Brown is also actively involved in Rural Support’s Farm Family Key Skills (FFSK) scheme.
The final speaker at the conference will be Neale Manning, a dairy farmer from Shropshire. He will talk about his own farm, and how he has dealt with succession.
Neale manages a 340ac grass farm in partnership with his wife and youngest son. Help is also available from an older son, who is a mechanical engineer.
Together, they milk 270 spring-calving cows, with dairy replacements reared on the farm and beef calves sold at two-weeks-old.