Joint Ventures go on line‏

Collaborative farming's flagship businesses will launch a new website on 22 November. The Joint Venture Farming Group (JVFG), the umbrella body for farming businesses that formally work together, has undertaken a ground-breaking bench-marking study to be showcased on its new website. The full results will be published early next year.

"Formal collaboration with written contracts and a management hierarchy may seem a daunting prospect for some farmers," comments JVFG chairman, Charles Matts. "But I've found for my own business and by talking to many others in the group, that working together all the year round and committing fully to a longer term arrangement with neighbouring farms, is more than worthwhile both personally and financially.

"The JVFG benchmarking study looks at business costs and returns over many tens of thousands of acres of land. Each member has submitted costs which we've number crunched through a new IT system developed with the help of funding from emda (the East Midlands Development Agency). From this data, we can see that the benchmarking exercise not only helps individual joint ventures but also helps the whole group to see where cost savings and efficiencies can be made."

The JVFG's new website will go live on 22 November, the date of the organisation's AGM. There will be both public and members' sections of the website, with details of how joint venture farming can benefit businesses, plus contacts and diary dates for the group.

The website's address from 22 November will be www.jvfg.co.uk.

Notes to editors:

1. For more information about the Joint Venture Farming Group, telephone its chairman, Charles Matts, on 01604 505973, or Simon Fisher at NFU East Midlands on 01572 824250.

2. NFU East Midlands administers and provides secretarial and PR support for the Joint Venture Farming Group.

3. Currently JVFG represents upwards of 50 farmers in 12 joint venture groups.