THE need for farming's national charity, the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution, in what its president Lord Plumb describes as "challenging times for agriculture", is as great as it has ever been.

This is highlighted in the latest annual review of RABI's activities.

The report, published for the annual meeting on Tuesday, June 21, shows that, in 2004, the welfare department helped 1,663 individuals and families, paying 14,490 grants totalling more than £1.381m.

At the same time, fundraising activities across the country, mostly organised through the 51 voluntary county committees, raised more than £650,000 through a wide variety of events.

In her report, RABI chairman Rosemary Nash underlines the charity's twin aims - raising money and spending it wisely.

As well as praising the welfare team for the care and understanding with which all applications for help were handled, she stressed their increasingly important role of ensuring that each applicant was not only helped by RABI but that all other avenues of funding, such as the state systems, were fully explored and exercised.

Looking to the future, chief executive Patrick Shervington, writes: "All the indications are that our resources and expertise will continue to be needed more than ever before."

Underlining the need to increase the profile of the charity to generate the income required, he says: "RABI's thrust must be 'fundraising, fundraising, fundraising'. This has to be our crusade as, without fundraising, we cannot deliver our core product of care."

Copies of the annual review are available from Shaw House, 27 West Way, Oxford, OX2 OQH, telephone 01865 724931. Full details of RABI activities are on its web site www.rabi.org.uk.