dune fremen language translator. At the moment, I feel weve got a lot of warm words, and we just need to know the nuts and bolts of what the genuine ambition is for this country. Minette Batters (MB): Well, George has been in Defra a long time. UKICE: But its also consulting, isnt it, on gene editing and other issues like that, which the Government sees as a big new possibility to appear more open to innovation than the EU. They have very different standards to us; they have big feedlot systems, they farm at serious scale. WebBrowse 72 minette batters photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more photos and images. We knew that, during Theresa Mays time at the Home Office, she ended the global scheme, and that had been an exemplar scheme. Real life consequences He was there as Minister of State for Farming beforehand, under Michael, so we knew George very, very well. Top $76,000-a-year New Jersey boarding school admits 'more should have been done' to stop bullying of boy, 17, who took his own life after being falsely accused of rape by cruel peers But I was well aware that wed burnt quite a lot of bridges with people, who felt that the NFU had behaved badly. UKICE: If you look at the whole period together, farming is obviously one of those areas where the big decisions used to be taken in Brussels, but theyre now being taken in a mix of London, Cardiff, Edinburgh. And of course, a lot of European workers were working within the food and farming sector, so that very quickly became, like trade, one of the things that we had taken for granted, that we were now very aware we couldnt take for granted anymore. The catastrophic part came from the fact that, with more than 70% of our exports going into the EU, we would face their very high tariff wall which, for agricultural products like beef and lamb and dairy, was an impossible economic ladder to climb and at the same time, as a nation we import more than 30% of the food we consume from the EU. We knew that we could have a global scheme, that it didnt all have to be about Europe, but with a reliance in the seasonal workforce, of 80,000 seasonal workers, to pick and pack and plant our fruit, veg and flowers. Did you target any of the backbenchers who were holding out? We can, as a source of emissions and a sink, go carbon-neutral, we can get to net zero. Has this led to a fundamental change in the relationship between the NFU and the governments of the different parts of the UK? Actually, Lord Plumb joined the discussion and Sir David Naish joined that discussion, as well as other previous Presidents. She supplemented her salary by writing romantic novelettes, short stories, and serials in her So, from our point of view, it was important to have bilaterals with our opposite numbers and allow them to lobby their governments on what was needed. Minette Batters (MB): Well, George has been in Defra a long time. We recognised how split they were, but all sides were united in that they had a complete thirst for information. Andrea Leadsom, a leading light of the Leave campaign, moves over to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), to replace Liz Truss, and the establishment of the Department for International Trade (DIT), to show that new trade deals were going to be a big thing for the new government. Minette Batters on Henry Plumb President of the NFU Minette Batters champions the life of Henry Plumb, Lord Plumb, who was the only British president of the I think the commitment was to get over 80% of the trade done in the term of this Parliament. It runs, I think, central government and its departments for under a month. So, Liam Fox was obviously very engaged at that time as Secretary of State at DIT on the opportunities of global trade. [5] The first of these novels is The Last Hours, set during the Black Death, followed by a sequel, The Turn of Midnight. On gene editing, yes, on plant breeding, its a massive opportunity. I think there was a bit of a fait accompli moment, that we live in a democratic country, democracy has been played out, and our focus was always on, How does this work best for British agriculture? And I think the likes of Daniel Kawczynski, too, supported it, on that very basis. Were now in May, and looking at these changes coming in for 2022. Her novels are often set against real backgrounds and real events to draw her readers into the 'reality' of what she is writing about. National Farmers Union is reportedly in talks to read more company news. Its obviously still a strange time, because weve still got Covid. So, Australia is really just the start of what this is going to look like. Minette Batters became the first woman to hold the top job at the organisation, which represents more than 50,000 farmers in England and Wales. The coalition showed that this was about consumers, this was about everybody believing in it. In her role as Do you think the Government has yet worked out beyond some of the things youve been worried about like the ban on live animal exports the opportunities of post-Brexit Britain, on regulating differently, more smartly, being more pro-innovation? Or was it like the rest of the population, where views seemed to be fairly entrenched? Do you think that the Brexit that has played out so far is at least meeting their expectations, in terms of what new opportunities it would bring? UKICE: Rather intriguingly, George Eustice, given his background, put down one of the indicative votes proposing UK accession to EFTA. There have been challenges. She won well over 30 races in her own right which included racing at I still believe that in the longer term, we will have to find ways with the EU to deliver less friction, because less friction equals less cost and thats to the benefit of both sides. You know, vote for this, because it will be cheaper. I think we were quite at arms length, I would say, from influencing the European thinking. NFU President Minette Batters tells us why it's so important to I remember reading the Defra press release the night before that interview, and it was a heart-stopping moment for me. And I was going out, putting on the radio, listening to Radio 4 and saying the same thing, going back in, looking at the television, thinking, This cant be right. Because at the end of the day, the NFU is going to be pivotal in this major re-set moment. MB: I think, bearing in mind how vital our market is to them, they could see that it allowed a way through. You were planting crops and you were making business decisions, having no idea whether you had a market or not. If we go and dilute that massively, and have a flood of much cheaper imports, that is obviously going to undermine our farmers. It was about saying that this needed to be fair and equitable to all. That is a breaking of the manifesto commitment. Because whatever we allow Australia to do, dont forget weve then got New Zealand, weve got Canada, and of course, overlaying all of that, weve got the Trans-Pacific deals. We had other members who were saying, You cannot take a position, or, If you do take a position, it must be vote Remain, or, It must be vote Leave. Of course, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) believed so strongly in Brexit. I think officials have grappled with it and understood it for a long time, but politically, its still very difficult. Of course, getting your voice heard in all of this was quite a challenge, I think, for the goods sector. That Wageningen piece of research was enormously helpful in how we continued to have the conversations with our members, across our democratic structure, because the NFU is totally democratic in the way that it operates and having independent economic analysis helped underpin the evidence base. I think most definitely, in the run-up to those no deals, many farmers were thinking, This really does look terrifying. Agricultural Acts dont come along very often 1947, 1920 its over a 70-year gap. Weve had endless statements, from the Prime Minister, from Liz Truss and others, about, Britains farmers will not be undermined in future trade agreements. From my point of view, I wanted to keep the market, the business, alive, bearing in mind that these are perishable products that we are dealing with. Weve got significant issues with the absence of border control posts on the north European coast which means that we effectively cant move any farm animals from GB to mainland EU. This is what Michael kicked off, effectively, with David Rutley, in the very beginning. I mean, a big, big difference, and it continues to grow. Ive met with the Australian negotiating team, and they are absolutely determined that they should have free access on beef and sheep. There is a lot of detail that needs to be progressed, and rapidly, for farmers to feel confident to get onto the new platform for next year. Weve obviously got a lot of trucks coming over and a lot of trucks going back empty. The government was clear it would not countenance food price inflation, so the Temporary Tariff Regime was conceived. So, we kicked off this campaign. We had a government that really believed you should take every decision up to the wire, and that was the way of getting a short-run better deal. So, I went to bed, went to sleep, woke up the following morning, and it was one of those situations Ive never done it before, Ill probably never do it again whereby you did not believe the television. So, I am enormously worried, because the Government has committed, publicly, time and time again, that it will not undermine our farmers. Now, what did preparation look like? That is going to be, I think, quite a challenge, especially on the back of Covid, in terms of making the case for future investment. I have to say, at this moment in time, it is hard to see how we retain our levels of self-sufficiency, and keep our farmers with the same price structure, effectively, that they have at the moment. So, I think, then, there were some very tough conversations. And then, of course, just this wall of silence. I would pose the question what does that mean for government buying standards? So, we had a very good discussion at NFU Council in April 2016. So, I think we engaged on every level. 1995 The CWA Gold Dagger Award (shortlist): 1995 The Best Translated Crime Fiction of the Year in Japan. I dont think DIT and Defra are aligned in their thinking. In fact, weve probably actively driven away people from some sectors. And we established some principles of what we were looking for, going forward, whether it was Leave or Remain. We just focused on, What we need is free and frictionless trade, which I think, for some, got quite annoying. UKICE: Were you at all worried that he seemed to be establishing a rather surprisingly good relationship with the green lobby, who I think probably had a similar, oh my God, moment when he was appointed. WebMinette Batters NFU President Minette runs a tenanted family farm in Wiltshire. The Best Foreign Honkaku Mystery of the Decade, Vice-Lieutenant and Deputy Lieutenants of Dorset, "Minette Walters announces first book in decade and retirement from crime fiction", "The Siege of Lyme Regis Dorset History Centre blog", "1349 by Minette Walters - Gregory & Company Authors' Agents", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Minette_Walters&oldid=1148375305, Short description is different from Wikidata, All articles with vague or ambiguous time, Vague or ambiguous time from October 2012, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2012, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. I wonder if you thought youd done enough to bring pressure to bear on individual MPs, as reputedly very effective lobbyists. We use cookies to enhance your user experience. Its also so complex, this area. [citation needed]. Minette met her husband Alec Walters while she was at Durham and they married in 1978. They have two sons, Roland and Philip. Minette Batters - President, National Farmers Union of England and Wales. What difference did it make to you in engaging with the Government when Michael Gove, on rehabilitation into the Cabinet, took over from Andrea Leadsom, and started to make a lot of noise about what post-Brexit policy might look like? In this conversation. And, as someone quite well known to you, were you relieved that it was someone who had a track record on farming? Chequers, I think brought a level of understanding. Initially she was an amateur jockey and assistant trainer to David Elsworth and James Toller. What we feel is that the dialogue must bring a pragmatic solution at some stage. And now, within the Agricultural Act of 2020, the Secretary of State for Defra has access to a multi-annual plan. As part of the British project Quick Reads, to encourage literacy amongst adults with reading difficulties, she wrote a 20,000-word novella called Chickenfeed. Bring everybody into the room, have a massive discussion, and then he would leave the room and you were never quite sure as to who had been listened to. We were well aware then that agriculture is incredibly complex, and always the last chapter in trade deals to be achieved. And a support aid budget of 3bn, a lot of talk is made about that. In 2019 Minette was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Dorset. Dont get me wrong, I think the NFU is really optimistic about the future, we really believe we can be leaders in climate-friendly food production. And I think George Eustice described this as seeing me have a sort of nuclear moment, where I nearly erupted through the ceiling. Do not just go to government with X, Y and Z as a problem. UKICE: When you got over the total shock and start regrouping, youre facing the prospect that, despite your stated position that, on balance, it was better for UK farming to remain, youre going to have to cope with the outcome of a Leave vote. But ultimately, there were two sides to all of this, and the UK wasnt the only party in the negotiations. We decided that in order to be compliant with the Electoral Commission rules, which of course had limited spending for unregistered bodies to 10,000, that we would need to take a position to comply with those rules. You could say he brought a massive breath of oxygen into the department. Walters describes herself as an exploratory writer who never uses a plot scheme, begins with simple premises, has no idea 'whodunit' until halfway through a story, but who remains excited about each novel because she, along with her reader, wants to know what happens next. We knew that we had to be able to inform our members of facts. That was pretty daunting, I think, for a lot of farmers. UKICE: Just on that, the Government has also moved to be more flexible on using neonicotinoids than it was before-. It means that the future absolutely has to be got right, and delivery has to work. It wasnt actually needed in the end, because the weather changed. UKICE: Weve heard about asparagus rotting in the fields, strawberries unpicked, daffodils unpicked. But then he left. I think Im right in saying that we were one of the first trade bodies, across any sector, to commission economic analysis and absolutely the first in the agri-food space. Minette is published in almost 40 countries and has sold in excess of 25,000,000 copies of her books worldwide. Well, that will be really, really damaging. WebCall Us Today! MB: I did. I think farmers are feeling reasonably optimistic at the moment. And I remember her saying to me, I had no idea how complicated Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) rules were. Minette met her husband Alec Walters while she was at Durham and they married in 1978. And why did you decide on your ultimate tactic, as we headed towards the referendum? Photograph: Adrian We appointed Nick von Westenholz to head up a team of four specialist advisers to consider the implications and develop our strategy. Youve got Defra, effectively, leading on border controls and things like export health certificates. So, influencing is going to be important. We do have to be all things to all men, whether its arable, livestock, dairy, horticulture plus all those cross-cutting issues of environment, land use, tenancy issues. I cant speak for the Ulster Farmers Union. That was the challenge. What did you think of that process, working with the Government on getting people ready for a whole bunch of really complicated border formalities that they havent had to bother with, to nearly as great an extent, over the last 45 years? So, once youd gone by those, you were into a no deal scenario by default. I had a call the other day, with COPA-COGECA, listening to the Commission and DG SANTE. What we must avoid is a two-tier food system. Despite its majority force to put the Trade and Agricultural Commission on a statutory basis and other things like that, does the Government recognise it doesnt necessarily have a parliamentary majority for its vision of future trade in agricultural products? There is a lot to lose if we dont get it right, and there is a lot to gain if we do it well. To undermine our farmers, when you want them to have regulation that costs a lot of money, and undermine them with cheap products coming in that dont even meet the first rung of the ladder, was going to do one thing, and that was going to put our farmers out of business. Minette Batters 0 Batters calls for Government assurances over impact of UK-Australia trade deal on UK farmers June 15, 2021 NFU president Minette Nov 13, 2021. farmbusiness.co.uk . We need a really transparent approach to how agriculture fits in all of this. But does the farming industry feel that its adapting okay, or are there surprising new challenges, unanticipated challenges, emerging? Batterss 17-year-old twins, who are studying for their A-levels, havent decided if they will take over running the farm, but it remains a family business. NFU President Minette Batters UK egg production has fallen to its lowest level in nine years. 30 Apr 2023 11:52:44 I always remember Faisal Islam saying that agriculture had managed to beat the rest of manufacturing in getting its voice heard in this arena. Minette has written another entry in the Quick Reads series entitled A Dreadful Murder for World Book Day 2013. Have you been pressurising government-? Five generations of her family have run the farm but, like the new NFU president, she is the first woman to take the reins. Boris Johnson was operating from a seismic majority, and so they have the power base to do whatever they want. The NFU wanted MPs to have more say on trade of agrifood. I think there was a sort of realisation then that, actually, they hadnt got this quite right, and they needed to be talking about farmers, about food production. [2] Walters spent a year at the Abbey School in Reading, Berkshire, before winning a Foundation Scholarship at the Godolphin boarding school in Salisbury. The gnarly issues that remain today are still to be resolved, and who knows how we will resolve them. But doing it well means really working collaboratively with everybody in the food and farming sector. The daffodil-growers in Cornwall will have faced enormous losses. It is no good going to government, just saying, I want. And the decision was taken, by NFU Council, the sovereign body of the NFU, that on the information available it was in British agricultures best economic interest to remain. So, in my opinion its been a phenomenal return on investment and it can be an even better return on investment, if we all work together. MB: Lord Frost has been the difficult one to date. MINETTE BATTERS: I have huge admiration for farmers across the world, not least our cousins in Australia and New Zealand. UKICE: We talked a bit earlier about the establishment of the Department for International Trade. We convened our council, our sovereign body, again, at a special meeting in London. Then there was the permanent focus, bearing in mind that successive governments have driven people out of doing what are deemed not to be office-based jobs, I suppose. Walters's third novel, The Scold's Bridle, then won the CWA Gold Dagger, giving her a unique treble. And of course, goods have proved, with Agri-food in capital letters, to be the problem child in all of this. Covid-19 has probably really shone a light on our diets, that a lot of them are not good diets, and we all need to have more fruit and veg in them. But for us, all the way through, it was about fairness, and making sure that trade was fair. Walters was born in Bishop's Stortford in 1949 to Samuel Jebb and Colleen Jebb. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of We asked the Wageningen team to carry out an economic impact assessment of what our departure would mean, and to show the effects on markets if new trade barriers were constructed between the EU and the UK. Go to them, saying, This is the solution to that problem. It just isnt going to work like that. espn reporters sleeping with athletes ossian elementary school calendar. What did the NFU want? It launched some plans for new tariffs, which were quite interesting, and it also made clear that it was prioritising regulatory autonomy, sovereignty, over removing friction. But it isnt an opportunity if we lose access to the EU market. Although weve left the EU, weve left transition, we havent achieved trade at scale with the rest of the world, in any shape or form, nor have the aid schemes changed or been reduced yet. You also hear talk of having higher standards here, so being above the EU. So, when I went and had my second meeting with Theresa May, it was to discuss her Chequers proposal. The National Farmers' Union (NFU) is demanding a written guarantee from the government that Brexit won't undermine British farming standards. So, in June 2020 we had over a million people in two weeks saying, Weve got to have a Trade and Agriculture Commission, MPs have got to be able to have their say. So, that was the conversation, literally, with Theresa May she hadnt realised how complex SPS was. I think it is always challenging when you work with a majority government. Her third novel, The Scolds Bridle, then won the CWA Gold Dagger, giving her a unique treble. It took two and a half years to write and was rejected by numerous publishing houses until Maria Rejt, Macmillan Publishers, bought it for 1250. MB: No, it wasnt. What we are seeing played out and its showing more with fish is that groupage is really difficult. But more generally, he was embarking on a quite radical reshaping of agricultural support and the post-CAP regime. Those principles would guide the discussion. The end of this will be judged in the years to come. Yes, we did have very high-quality affordable food, the most affordable in Europe, the third most affordable in the world. There are a lot of things that need to be done. The Mail on Sunday agreed to help promote the NFUs standards petition. So, there is a lot of water, I would say, to go under the bridge before that question can be answered. She graduated from Trevelyan College, Durham in 1971 with a BA in French. UKICE: In terms of getting ready, we had the negotiations going on, but there was a need to prepare for a rather uncertain change of regime at the end of 2020, when the transition ended. MB: Really concerned. WebOn 19 April our Environmental Change & #FoodSecurity inquiry heard from @HenryDimbleby; @Minette_Batters, @NFUtweets; Peter Dawson, @dairyuk; @suepritch, @FFC_Commission; and Chris Brown, @asda. The dexterity of the human hand was essential. minette batters family Movies. Were such a big organisation, representing 50,000 farmers across England and Wales.

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