RABI builds on its 150-year history
Rachel Jones looks back at the origins of RABI, the longest-running of the charities we’re supporting in Farmers Weekly’s Farmer to Farmer campaign
After a year of 150th anniversary celebrations, the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution (RABI) has appointed a new chairman, ushering in a new chapter in its history.
HRH The Duke of Gloucester will succeed Lord Plumb of Coleshill to become president of the charity – the ninth person to hold the position since the organisation was founded. But the RABI he will lead in 2011 has come a long way from the one set up by first-generation farmer John Mechi in 1860.
Coming from London – where City Guilds supported tradespeople who fell on hard times – Mechi was horrified to discover there was no equivalent organisation for farmers to turn to in times of trouble. To address this gap, he started canvassing support from noblemen, gentlemen, farmers and tradespeople up and down the country. He even persuaded Queen Victoria to become a patron, earning the organisation its “Royal” prefix.
Records of some of the charity’s earliest beneficiaries show that many of the problems faced by farmers in the late 1800s were remarkably similar to those faced by farmers today.
Included in RABI’s archives are details of 74-year-old Mary Way from Hampshire, who was struggling under “high rental and buying stock, succeeded by low and ruinous prices in agricultural produce.” Sussex farmers Thomas and Sarah Tilbury cited “losses by the low price of corn” as the reason for their distress, while Mary Grundy from Staffordshire described “diseases in cattle”.
From these very earliest cases, RABI has notched up 150 years of uninterrupted service to the farming community, and its reach continues to grow.
In recent years, the organisation has collaborated with two other UK-based agricultural charities – Farm Crisis Network and ARC-Addington Fund – under the banner of Farming Help.
Through the Farmer to Farmer campaign, which was launched in November and runs until the early New Year, Farmers Weekly is working with all three Farming Help charities, along with Send a Cow in Africa, to raise awareness and money for the crucial work they do.
HOW TO DONATE
If you’d like to donate to Farming Help. you can do it in two ways: Send a cheque made payable to Farming Help to the Farmers Weekly Christmas campaign, c/o RABI, Shaw House, 27 West Way, Oxford OX2 0QH or go to the Justgiving website www.justgiving.com/farmer-farmer-christmas-campaign Note: Money sent to Farming Help will be split equally between the three charities involved.
If you’d like to give to Send a Cow, you can do it in two ways: Send a cheque made payable to Send a Cow to the Farmers Weekly Christmas campaign, The Old Estate Yard, Newton St Loe, Bath BA2 9BR or go to a giving page at www.sendacow.org.uk/farmers-appeal