RAF joins Britain’s best farming innovators
What a great time we had at this week’s LAMMA show, doing what we love best – talking to farmers!
It was fantastic to meet so many people, making new friends and reuniting with old friends – and we were honoured to sponsor the LAMMA Innovation Awards!
Our CEO Matthew Smart appeared on AgriConnect TV’s coverage of the show at the NEC in Birmingham to outline just why it’s so important to us all at Rural Asset Finance to support the awards and recognise the excellent work of British farmers.
“We’ve always known that farmers are good innovators,” said Matthew, “But we’re all very interested in the technological advancements required in agriculture, precision farming and also the sustainability angle as well. So there are lots of good reasons for farmers and their supply chains to be innovating.
We’ve been really impressed by the standard of entries,” said Matthew. “All of the gold winners, I thought, were worthy champions in their category. “I was one of the judges for the digital innovation award and the Raindancer app that won (designed by RST Irrigation Ltd to ensure irrigation is kept within sector boundaries and tracks how much water has been applied in each area) has solved an age-old problem in farming of irrigator management. How have we done without it for so many years?
“And Brian Knight and Knight Farm Machinery winning the overall innovation award, again highly deserved – this (Smart-Inject) product is sustainable, precision farming, directing chemicals through each individual nozzle onto the ground in exactly the right place. A worthy winner and exactly the reasons we’re involved in these awards.”
Rural Asset Finance staff’s farming backgrounds means we understand just how much positive impact such inventions will have on day-to-day farming. We also clearly understand the issues today’s farmers face, as Matthew illustrated.
“There are challenges and opportunities for farmers in the next 10 years,” he added. “The short-term challenges we see as cash flow for this year – the capping of BPS in England, the increase in minimum wage, the associated National Insurance costs, the Carbon Tax, all these things are going to hit pretty hard and pretty quickly. We’re trying to provide facilities to help farmers ride through this short term.
“In the medium term it’s the inheritance tax changes. A lot of family farms will need to put in place a succession plan, which would help us to help them access longer term funds – it’s hard from a lender’s point of view to lend over 25 years on a farm mortgage when the borrower is the older generation. so that may need some farms to look at restructuring to think of the longer term plan.
“But in the long term, farms are great places to run a variety of businesses, so if it was me I’d be de-risking the business, taking in lots of smaller income streams which can all be based on the farm, so you’re not then reliant exclusively on traditional farming income.” Wherever you are in the country, there are lots of innovations that can happen and we’re big fans of all of that.”
Congratulations to all LAMMA Innovation Award gold winners, the runners-up and every entrant in every category for showing the world why British agriculture is one of the most innovative, creative industries in the world.
We salute you all!
