Enhancing leadership and management skills within agriculture and the land-based industries

The Course

The aim of the training course is to develop an individual’s skills and abilities to enable him or her to become a more effective asset at work, and through that to the rural sector as a whole.

Course Topics

The 2023/2024 training is residential and involves:

  • a five-day tutored course at the RAU, Cirencester
  • a four-day project-based case study module based at the RAU, Cirencester
  • a second four-day project-based case study module based at Wallops Woods Holiday Cottages in Hampshire

Topics to be covered include:

  • Managing people
  • Business Practice, taxation and law
  • Media management
  • Leadership, personal and organisational

2023/2024 Course dates:

Application closing date:- 28th May 2023.
Interview date: 28th June 2023, RAU Cirencester.
Module 1 - 4th - 8th December 2023, RAU Cirencester.
Module 2 - 8th - 11th January 2024, RAU Cirencester.
Module 3 - 5th - 8th February 2024, Wallops Wood, Hampshire.

The Course is sponsored by the Trust, but participants will be asked to make a contribution of £500 towards the cost of their training. This represents a small proportion of the total costs. Bursaries are available at the discretion of the Trustees for individuals who might be unable to pay this charge.

Participants may be asked to contribute to expenses for some of the ancillary activities and are asked to support the aims and activities of the Trust in the future.

More details are available here

Course Topics

Chris Padfield

Chris runs a 400 hectare family farm on the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire border. He has a background in agricultural education having worked at Hartpury College and the Royal Agricultural University before setting up a training company. Chris completed a Nuffield Scholarship on farm staff training in 2015. Chris will be assisted in tutoring the course by Dr James Jones who has run the course since 2002 and others including JET Alumni. A range of academics, professionals and leaders from inside and outside the industry will also contribute to the training.

Comments from past scholars

"The John Edgar Trust is much more than just a management course. The course showed me my strengths and how best to use them, but more importantly, isolated my weak points and helped me improve them. I took things home straight away and in three very short intense weeks made lifelong friends. I cannot recommend the John Edgar Trust Course highly enough."

"The JET course exposed a fairly hardened 35 year old to some incredible mentors and tutors and is unrivalled by my other experiences. Through hard work and a brilliant course structure, I was stripped down and put back together again in the right order to tackle my career in the agricultural sector."

"During my time on the John Edgar programme I was amazed by the diversity of both the farm visits and my fellow scholars. Seeing how different people assessed opportunities and risks has given me a much wider understanding of the rural world. This now means I can make better decisions and also have improved my skills when approaching others on controversial issues, a key part of my job as a farm management consultant"