The purpose of the Women in Food and Farming network is to offer support and opportunities for women to meet other female talent in the industry. Following up our successful change last year we have held a number of smaller events and an occasional large London-based get together. We held seven events, including two large ones (ca 100 attendees) in London. Members were invited to attend; events were publicised on social media to encourage others to join. Almost all attendees are women, but some men did attend and were welcomed. Over 250 people had tickets to WIFF events during the year plus at least another hundred came to non-ticketed events such as at Cereals, see below. The operational team have worked hard to keep the website up to date with at least monthly blog articles and newsletters. We advertised positions on the team and two new members were recruited. We issued 10 newsletters and a further 10 communications specifically about an event to promote our events; other events in our industry which we thought they should be aware of and also a rural retreat run by one of our regular speakers. We advertised jobs, courses and drew members attention to press articles, podcasts and grant opportunities as well as celebrating recognition of women in the industry. Every issue invites readers to contribute their own input to future newsletters. These have had open rates of 45% which is high for marketing mailouts. We had a speaker panel at Cereals, a major agricultural event, on the subject of sustainable agriculture, strategies for resilience, regeneration and results, which was well attended. We were asked again to host an event at Lamma: we expect a WIFF event at LAMMA to become a regular event, this year we ran a speed networking event which was much appreciated. We held an event at Harper Adams University on career journeys and the power of networking, and two events at Savills in London, on the themes of building trust value and progress across the food chain and selling the story of UK food and farming, The Farmers Club held a dinner for women and sought our help to increase the numbers. We plan to work closely with them to make sure this event is successful and accessible for younger women in the industry in future years. Those attending events were able to hear speakers and ask questions but also have time to network and meet other women in the industry. Events are well attended, have a positive feeling to them and the numbers of members signed up has increased to 1563 with 1850 followers on LinkedIn. We have kept up a stream of posts on LinkedIn and the steering group regularly repost stories to increase penetration. We have had sponsorship from Savills at their events, which means we generate funds to cover our web hosting and other costs, and other organisations have provided venues and refreshments free of charge. We continued to have events free for Under 30s either funded by us or by the sponsors hosting the event. We have explored partnerships with Farmers Weekly (Mark Allen Group) and Farmers Guardian, both of which have women’s networks, which will be acted on in the following year.

No consultation with stakeholders

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