IT was very much his vision,’ states Mark, Baron Price, when explaining the genesis of the Royal Countryside Fund (RCF)—formerly The Prince’s Countryside Fund—and Charles III’s involvement from the very beginning.
The charity’s remit has always been to give small family farms and rural communities the support they need to survive and thrive into the future, offering a form of protective umbrella and assistance in various guises. Since its inception in 2010, it has paid out more than £11.5 million in grants for community projects and supported in excess of 2,500 family farms.
In those early days, Lord Price’s role was to rally big business to build up the coffers of this fledgling organisation (companies such as Waitrose and Barbour soon came on board and, later, the People’s Postcode Lottery, Aldi and Morrisons, to name but a few). ‘I can’t pinpoint a specific day or a eureka moment in terms of the founding of the RCF,’ he recalls. ‘I think it evolved from crises and problems in the countryside and the subsequent conversations as to what might be done.’
Some of these conversations took place on Yew Tree Farm, in Borrowdale, Cumbria, a National Trust tenanted farm run by Joe and Hazel Relph. The then Prince of Wales began visiting the Relphs after the calamitous foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001.
‘[The Prince] actually came up with the idea of The Prince’s Countryside Fund when he was staying here,’ they told COUNTRY LIFE in 2013. ‘Before that, we’d had a very lean decade in which there were no people coming into farming, but now positive things are starting to happen. You feel as if you have somebody on your side.’
The King was so interested in what the farmers had to say that his staff had to move him along
Today, the RCF sets aside more than £1 million a year to assist small-scale farmers, in part via its Farming Resilience Programme (FRP), which offers free workshop-style business skills training. During the past winter/spring period, 750 farmers signed up, and some term the assistance ‘life changing’. Almost £1 million is also awarded annually for rural community projects. This is made up of the £300,000 earmarked for the Farm Support Groups scheme (which funds the local charities and organisations that, in turn, help those working in agriculture and the countryside) and the £500,000 paid as grants under the Supporting Rural Communities programme, to bolster local-led initiatives in isolated rural areas. Such schemes range from the Gateway House built on North Ronaldsay in Orkney, where newcomers can stay before committing to a life on
