THE National Trust has launched a £300,000 programme aimed at equipping its tenants with the skills to cope with the overhaul of the farm subsidy system, reports Jennie Dennett.

The two-year project, backed entirely with money from Barclays Bank, will pay for a training programme and demonstration events to enable farmers to swap best practice.

A rural skills manager and a rural enterprise manager will be employed to offer training in areas including diversification, facilitating part-time farming and business management.

They will also be charged with responding to requests from the Trust's 2,000 tenants to develop face-to-face training and demonstration farm events.

A guide for new entrants to National Trust farms will also be published.

The programme builds on the Trust's bleak assessment of farming futures particularly in the uplands where their own research predicted that many hill farms would be losing £10,000 a year by 2012.

It is anticipated that more farms will have to look for income beyond livestock and land to make a living following this year's subsidy-shrinking reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy.

"Farming on its own has almost dropped off now," said senior Trust spokesman Mike Collins. "What we are trying to do is to equip farmers as best we can with the skills, experience and knowledge to make them competitive and make sure the farm is sustainable in terms of income and also the environment."

He rejected suggestions that the project was being launched to deflect criticism over the Trust's recent moves to split-up High Yewdale Farm at Coniston, a 17th Century farm left to the conservation charity by children's author Beatrix Potter. The advice project pre-dated the High Yewdale debate and had been "in the pipeline for several years", he said.

Mr Collins also countered criticisms that the most supportive thing it might do to support its farmers was to cut National Trust rents.

"We do try and keep the rent as low as possible," he said. "In some cases the rent tenants pay for a farm is less than you'd pay for a three-bedroomed house per month."

He added that for many upland farmers who were seeing drastic cuts to their subsidies as a result of the move from payments per head of livestock to area payments, rent changes made little difference to their viability.

As part of the two-year project the National Trust will also be piloting new standards for farm advice creating minimum levels of expertise which will need to be accredited to ensure farmers get sound, professional help. Results from all aspects of the project will be shared with the Government, farming industry and partner organisations.

Speaking at the project launch last week, Sir Don Curry, chair of the Government's Sustainable Farming and Food Implementation Group, welcomed the initiative saying, "good quality advice and training was essential for farmers in an increasingly competitive world market."

NT tenant Richard Aldis of Hardwick Park Farm, Derbyshire said: "Few other businesses require such a range of skills. In any one day I might be calving at breakfast time, planting trees before lunch, working with a school group in the afternoon and developing a marketing strategy for our lamb in the evening. This project will help me and other Trust farmers develop our skills and support those that are keen to share ideas and demonstrate good practice."