Pippa Woods obituary
The Devon farmer Pippa Woods, who has died aged 96, campaigned on behalf of small, family farms. A leading light in the Small Farmers’ Association from its start in 1979, she did much to raise awareness of the problems of such producers.
Farms all around her were being sold off to non-farmers with higher incomes – not to be farmed, but for the sake of their beautiful farmhouses – and the land was being divided so that farms were getting bigger while the community of farmers was getting smaller. As prices soared, it was increasingly difficult for young people to get on to the bottom rungs of the ladder.
The government favoured large farms, but she argued that there was a limit to the advantages of greater size, both in production and profitability, and the social and environmental effects were rarely considered. When the Common Agricultural Policy, or the government, or the National Farmers’ Union seemingly ignored the situation of the small farmer, Pippa was aware of developments and eager to fight their corner.
In the pages of Farmers Weekly she argued for the capping of farm payments, in the hope that the government or the NFU might to some extent divert them away from those with abundant hectares and livestock. Beyond Britain, she noted how “powerful global traders have engineered a situation where all the farmers of the world are competing against each other to sell their crops, usually at below the cost of production”, with the result that they had to cultivate more, and so over-produce.
The solution she saw as family farming related to the income levels of particular countries rather than globalisation: “Free trade is bad, not good, for world prosperity ... the principle of food sovereignty should be the basis of every nation’s agricultural economy”.
She may not have succeeded in influencing capping levels, but as well as saying things, she could do them, as when she rejected the constantly publicised ambition of ever higher milk yields from her cows. In consequence they lived longer and had an average of six lactations, instead of the average of three and a half expected of cows that gave higher yields.
Her approach was prescient: she cared about animal welfare and about the environment before it was normal or fashionable. As far back as 1960, she planted primrose seedlings and wild flower seeds in the naked patches left by hedge removal and road widening. She constantly went on lobbying expeditions to London, and when environmental stewardships came to underline the importance of the farmer in relation to the natural world she was able to see her long-held concerns addressed in public policy.
Born in Yorkshire, Pippa was the daughter of Sir Philip Hendy, the director of the National Gallery, London, in the postwar period, and his wife, Kythé Ogilvy, a London county councillor. Pippa studied at Dartington school, Devon, and enjoyed helping out on its farm. In 1940, when she was 14, she went with her mother to the US for the duration of the second world war.
Back at Dartington four years later she was involved with harvesting and hedging. In 1946 she married Bob Woods, manager of the school farm, and for seven years they lived in Sudan, where Bob was an agricultural officer, at which point they had two daughters, Gill and Helen.
In 1954 they were able to buy Osborne Newton farm, Kingsbridge, Devon, and for its 112 acres acquired Ayrshire dairy cows. When the Ayrshires did not do well, they used the then innovative artificial insemination to cross with British Friesians, which had the reputation of being the milkiest cows.
They learned as they went along, using grants to help with new buildings, fences and roads, and did a great deal of the work themselves, including building a milking parlour. Pippa began a very successful egg business that grew to 1,000 hens, keeping the young birds on grass in movable arks, and the layers in barns.
The young woman who collected and cleaned eggs also acted as childminder for David, Pippa and Bob’s youngest child. But when, in the 1960s, the industry took to the battery farming of hens, the price of eggs plummeted.
Pippa had done most of the lambing when they had 60 sheep, but after they gave them up in the 1970s, they specialised in dairy cows. Bob, who had taken all the main decisions, died in 1976, and from then on Pippa took over, David later becoming a partner.
Early on the Small Farmers’ Association became the Family Farmers’ Association, with Pippa as its chair. By the 90s, her farm had nearly doubled in size to 204 acres.
When Farmers Weekly interviewed her in 2014, the international year of family farming, she pointed out that David was running the farm with 60 suckler cows and up to 140 beef cattle, but with no regular help; previously the farm had supported four people working full-time. Multinationals had made the situation of the family farmer demonstrably worse. In 2016 she was appointed CBE for work in the rural community.
She is survived by her three children, five grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren.
• Pippa (Philippa) Woods, farmer and campaigner, born 24 August 1926; died 4 October 2022