School for Social Entrepreneurs are supporting a change in British agriculture, food production, food security and land-based business.

We are working with Defra (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) to work towards seeing a more enterprising sector and believe our approach at The School for Social Entrepreneurs will help shift the sector to be more proactive.

Through the New Entrant Support Scheme, we will provide tactical support to nurture entrepreneurs to develop their business ideas, foster innovation and promote growth. We are looking to recruit individuals thinking about starting a land-based business or scaling up an existing business. Participants will be supported to pitch for the land and finance they need.

The pilot is available to:

individuals with some farming experience, but not their own land-based business (Start-up programme)
individuals with 4 to 10 years’ experience running a land-based farming business (Scale-up programme)

The schemes are available in:

Rural areas of South West England
Peri-urban areas in West Yorkshire

The learning programme will take place over 14 days between February and May 2023.

The pilot is not just for arable or animal farming businesses. It also includes horticulture, agro-forestry and environmental service businesses, such as providing livestock for arable farms as part of an agroecology system. We want to recruit 80 participants to the pilot.

The deadline for applications is 11.59pm on 5th January 2023.

More information and for applications visit www.the-sse.org/courses/new-entrant-scheme-pilot/