Brexit the big test for union’s new leader down south

Comment Fordyce Maxwell

The National Farmers Union of England and Wales finally got there. Two years later than it could have done and 110 years after the union was formed, its council last week elected a woman, Minette Batters, as president. That leaves only the Labour Party, the Scottish NFU, the US and a few dozen golf clubs to accept that a woman can do the top job.

Let’s not get carried away. There are many other male and maledominated organisations where a woman is unlikely to be elected to the top job in the foreseeable future. There are many others that a sane woman would pay not to join, never mind lead.

Panic in male-dominated organisations about a drop in testosterone levels if women took leading roles should never be underestimated. But in the small world of farming it has been possible to argue for years from first principles, and I have, that women should play a much more prominent part.

The first principle is that at young farmers’ club level most of the work is still done by the young women members. They are also usually the ones who leave home to work and know there is an outside world. In later life the same applies to farmers’ wives. They’re the ones who work full-time or part-time away from the farm, bringing in extra income while running the home, family and frequently the office while providing solace and back-up for male partners suffering from farming stress.

0 Minette Batters, president of the NFU of England and Wales

I realise that change has accelerated in recent years with recognition that women are not a separate species, recognition in unexpected religious quarters for, for example, same-sex marriage, campaigns for equal pay and giving women a fair chance to get top jobs in business.

That has made the lack of progress for such change in the farmers’ unions more disappointing. Two years ago Batters stood for election and it didn’t take a genius, or even me, to forecast that English NFU council members would stick with Meurig Raymond. They did.

But it’s to that union’s credit that, two years on, when Raymond stood down, Batters was elected by a two to one majority. What she has to do now is prove that her council members got it right in a fraught time for farmers. That’s right – what happens to them after we leave the European Union?

It remains a mystery to me why so many farmers voted to leave the EU in the referendum. But they did and now wonder why. Both in England and Scotland that gives the respective union top teams a hard row to hoe for the next few years as they try desperately to argue for financial security.

And for Batters, as my colleague Andrew Arbuckle neatly puts it, her agenda on Brexit matters more than her gender. In an interview this week she seemed to pin a lot of hope on farmers’ exports. A free trade deal is essential for farmers and consumers, she said, and Europe, with 500 million potential customers for farm exports, is key.

At home, farmers face “the most savage retail price war in the world” as the discount retailers and big supermarkets try to outdo each other with low prices and in doing so squeeze suppliers. This continuous squeeze and always uncertain British weather mean that, whatever government is in power, it can’t leave farmers without some subsidy support, she said.

As union president and also as a beef and sheep farmer she has noted the trend by consumers to eat less meat. Farmers have to accept that meat need not be part of every meal, while arguing the case for a balanced diet.

Arguing their case in a reasoned way is the way ahead for farmers, she believes, whether it is for some form of subsidy, producing meat or what they do for the environment: “The environment and nature is much more reliant on a farmed landscape than many people realise.”

She is also convinced that farming has a future and for youngsters, male and female, offers a brilliant career. Every one of her members will hope she is right.