Clynfyw Community Benefit Society

Introduction to Clynfyw CBS by Jim Bowen:

For anyone who has followed Clynfyw’s evolution, it will be no surprise to learn that we are thinking of the future.

For a long time we have been wondering about what happens to Clynfyw in the years to come, not just the care farm bit but the farm as whole. And after a lot of discussion the idea of setting up Clynfyw Community Benefit Society and running a series of community share offers seems a good way of planning a sensible long term future for the farm while enabling it to become more of a community asset with long term benefits for all involved and the wider community.

Would you like to be part of this adventure? Do you have time to spare and skills to offer? We’d love to hear from you.

Community Share Offers have been going for some time and are particularly popular around here. Here is a link for more info on how community share offers work in case you are interested. (https://wales.coop/what-we-do/toolkits-and-guides/community shares step-by-step/).

We aim to formally start the share offer in February 2023 and we are in discussion about the best way to go ahead and do this. We have been down a few rabbit holes which led nowhere, but are back out again now and the pathway appears clearer.

The success of our the CBS campaign depends on community involvement right from the start. And that means now! We have been planning this for a while, talking to people, listening and learning but there is still much more to do.

We will be holding Visioning Events throughout the spring both on site and on line. We hope that each event will have a theme which links to the work of Clynfyw CBS and which the Share Offer will help enable to happen. Numbers will be limited so please get in touch if you would like to book a place and take part.

Change is challenging, and the future is a scary thing. With evidence of the climate crisis increasingly apparent, land use is changing. People are moving. Food production will be different. Food security and sovereignty are all the more important. Networking, skill sharing and collaboration are essential. Clynfyw has already made headway in these areas and we see that a community share offer would be a good way of engaging more people in what is happening here now, while also ensuring their involvement to help shape what happens next. We want to contribute and for our direction to be shaped by the needs of those around us. And we want to make sure that vulnerable people are at the heart of the changes here to make sure they are not marginalised and ignored as times get harder.

Please let us know if you would like to help. Come to a Visioning Event, or email. We want input from our community to keep us on the right track. 

Click here to read the Clynfyw CBS_Business Plan 2021

We have big ambitions for the work of Clynfyw CBS. This is detailed in the evolving Business Plan. We intend for everyone involved to benefit, from the tenants, the investors and the community as a whole. For investors there is the obvious benefit of a return of up to 4% return on investments, which is more than you can get on most ethical investments these days, but hopefully the social and environmental gains will be tempting too. We will be holding open days and zoom meetings with more information.

We are at the start of a daunting, but exciting journey and we hope you will be interested in learning more and joining us in shaping the future. If so, please let in touch.

General information

Please note that this is a community initiative with the objective of purchasing a section of Clynfyw Farm in Abercych to run it as a community-orientate farm.

Clynfyw Farm is 395 acres in size (244 being agricultural land and 151 being woodland.) It has been an award winning pioneer of community focussed farm diversification for over thirty years.

Clynfyw Community Benefit Society has been established to run community share offers which we hope, over time, will enable the farm to become community owned, honouring its current uses, while focusing on community-focussed resilience, regenerative land use so that it can be enjoyed as a secure community asset in perpetuity.

The main objective now is to purchase the first part of the farm and ensure that the ownership is transferred to the community as soon as possible.
The Wales Co-op has assisted us to create a Community Benefit Society with a community benefit shareholding constitution. This will allow us to draw in future community support funding. You may purchase more than one share, but the voting rights will be on a one person one vote basis (not one vote per share).

Thanks