The tough task of being a farming leader

It is hard not to be impressed by Minette Batters.

She was the first female president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) in England and Wales, leading the 46,000-member organisation through Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.

She took over the running her family farm, despite opposition from her father. She established and managed a catering business and later set up a wedding venue.

As a jockey, she has ridden 30 point-to-point winners. As a runner, she has a sub-four-hour marathon. She is also a mother of twins, a member of the House of Lords, and a published author.

But none of this comes across as boastful or praise-hungry in Harvest, her new memoir.

The book starts at her early childhood in Wiltshire, and runs to her independent review into farm profitability which was released late last year.

A lot has happened in between. In the book, Batters rattles through her busy life at pace and gives an honest account of the challenges she has faced.

Whilst most commentary about her presidency tends to focus on her being the first female, it is often overlooked that NFU leaders tend not to be small tenant farmers like her.

Batters highlights this in Harvest, stating that NFU presidents are usually “big landowners running large farming enterprises with a significant number of staff”.

She is keen not to dwell on being the first female president and, when she ran for election, she wanted her campaign to be about “being the best person for the job”.

On women in agriculture in general, Batters says it is a “false perception” that farming is male orientated.

“I know from my own upbringing that women like my mother are the backbone of many farming businesses,” she writes.

NFU journey

Batters got involved in the NFU when she was having trouble with an environment agency’s plan to flood low-laying fields on her farm.

From early on in her NFU journey, her argument is that farmers will only get their voices heard when they work together.

But it is clear from reading Harvest that being a farming leader is not an easy task.

Pleasing thousands of farmer members whilst trying to lobby uninterested politicians and civil servants is nigh on impossible at times.

The book is recommended reading for those farmers who constantly criticise farming leaders, especially those who seem to think a disruptive street protest is the answer to everything.

“You can have your day in the sun letting rip, but what do you do the next day? Ultimately being angry is the easy bit. It’s resolving the problem that’s needed,” Batters writes.

The bulk of Minette Batters’s new book focuses on her six years as NFU president from 2018 to 2024, as well as her four years as deputy president before that.

Looking at that 10-year period alone, Harvest offers a first-hand insight into a turbulent time for UK farming.

Readers go on a trip down Brexit Lane. A major concern for the NFU at the time was that UK farmers would be sacrificed in trade deals as Britain tried to go global after leaving the EU.

Batters spearheaded a campaign to uphold food import standards. It opposed food being imported from countries which is produced in ways that would be illegal in the UK.

She formed the broadest of broad coalitions, which included celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, environmental groups, the Mail on Sunday and politicians from all backgrounds.

Her ability to speak with a unifying voice and to gain traction in today’s media environment without being polarising are arguably two of her best attributes as a farming leader.

On a thorny Brexit issue closer to home, Batters clearly understood the sensitivities around the Irish border and she visited farms in the border area shortly after the referendum.

In England, the loss of direct payments is arguably one of the biggest outworkings of leaving the EU.

In Harvest, Batters suggests that policy makers in England were hell bent on shifting money to only supporting environmental measures, regardless of NFU misgivings.

“I never could have imagined the battle we would have to fight to ensure the Agriculture Bill focuses on agriculture,” she writes.

The picture is very different in NI where farmer representatives have been much more involved in shaping new farm schemes. Reading Harvest made me thankful for that.

Minette Batters’ memoir offers a fly on the wall view of many meetings that took place between the NFU and senior British politicians over a 10-year period. On a farm visit in Derbyshire during the COVID-19 pandemic, Batters suggests that the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not understand his own social distancing rules.

During another farm visit, the then International Trade Secretary Liz Truss clearly did not realise that meat processor ABP was Irish-owned when she spoke to its chief executive.

Batters writes that the Tory MP told Bob Carnell not to worry about the UK-Australia trade deal because “all it’s going to do is displace Irish beef”.

The former NFU president reveals details of a fiery meeting with Truss’s predecessor Liam Fox who had plans to “import cheap raw ingredients” so they could be processed and sold as UK-origin food.

“I nearly self-propel through the ceiling,” Batters writes.

There were many interactions with former Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Batters offers readers her honest opinion of him: “I like Gove, I respect him, but I do not trust him one iota.”

However, the most worrying revelations come from NFU meetings with civil servants, as these faces do not change between election cycles.

Batters paints a picture of government machinery that simply does not care about domestic food production.

“In my eyes, there is most definitely a plan to reduce the numbers of farmers in England,” she writes.

For me, the most shocking example was an online meeting with the top civil servant in Defra, Tamara Finkelstein, during the pandemic.

Batters told her that upland farmers in England are being forced off the land due to the government’s shift towards only supporting environment actions.

“Tamara had simply shrugged her shoulders, and at this point I found tears running down my face. It was the sheer frustration of not cutting through when so much is at stake,” she writes.

Advice for life from former NFU president

Dispersed throughout Harvest are golden nuggets of advice and with no shortage of life experience, it is probably no surprise that Minette Batters has some wisdom to offer readers.

Some of my favourites include:

“We only come to regret what we haven’t done in life, rather than what we have.”

“Things are rarely as bad as they seem, or as good as they could be.”

“I can only take one day at a time and be forever grateful for what I have.”

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”