Election hustings to start for NFU roles

East Bedfordshire farmer Peter Kendall has led as president for eight years but is standing down and the roles of president, deputy president and vice president are all up for grabs this time.

Ms Dunn, of North Carlton Farm in Stockton on Forest, is aiming for either the deputy or vice president’s role. If successful she could ultimately become elected as the first female president.

Four days of hustings start on Monday when all candidates tour the NFU regions, each giving a three-minute presentation, then answering questions for a further nine minutes.

“For me the overarching theme has to be about better returns for farmers and profitability,” Ms Dunn explains.

“We’ve had a number of years where the talk has been more of sustainability. That’s all very well but nobody else is in business for anything less than profitability. Without it we can’t build and reinvest for the future.

“One of the ways in which that can be better achieved is by the NFU, our parliamentary Ministers and Defra being increasingly proactive in the European Union. We need to persuade those with influence not to stand on the sidelines but to be in there and fighting for us. That’s something that I don’t think always happens.

“I’m very aware that it is sometimes difficult to find total agreement in a pan-European scheme but we need to be talking and building alliances that will then lead to a better agricultural framework. If we only react to what has been decided afterwards then that is too late to do something about it.

“We do have people who chair various committees and are involved with commodities in Brussels, but we certainly need to be more effective and mitigate some of what comes out from there.”

While all of this talk of Europe and the NFU’s position is what you might expect from some kind of besuited politician, Ms Dunn is every inch the down-to-earth, real welly boots farmer who, although not from a family farming background, has proved that if you are willing, keen and have the desire then you can succeed.

Her great uncle Will had a mixed farm at West Knapton where she spent a lot of time during her school days and she regularly attended the now defunct Seamer market and Malton.

“I knew I wanted to farm right then. When I left school I started as a groom and ended up working on a farm for a few years until I landed a student job with Raymond Twiddle at Knapton Hall Estate.

“My husband Alistair was his farm manager and that’s how we met. I’d always held a passion to rent my own farm so I persuaded Alistair that as he was and still is a workaholic and I wanted a farm of our own that we should apply for a tenancy.”

Their first tenancy was 200 miles away on a 70-acre arable holding in Cambridgeshire where they ran cattle and sheep and she joined the NFU as a member of the Wisbech branch.

Some 18 months later a chance to take on the 124-acre North Carlton Farm in North Yorkshire arose and Rosey and Alistair have been there ever since. Taking into account grazing land rented elsewhere and contract farming operations in Holtby, their total farm acreage is around 400. They run 190 commercial cattle of which 50 are sucklers, and 175 breeding ewes mainly Suffolk Cross and a few Mules. They grow wheat and barley and about half of the farm is down to grass.

The catalyst for Rosey’s rise through the NFU, from being a member of York NFU when they returned to Yorkshire, was a last minute call to go to Brussels as part of an NFU party seeking to the lift the beef ban: “I just thought it would be good experience. We went down on Eurostar and Ben Gill (NFU president at the time) approached me.

“He asked me to eyeball the German MEP Dagmar Roth Behredt and tell her how things were for UK farmers.

“That was the start of my involvement in a politically serious way.”

Since, she has chaired livestock and sugar beet committees and became county chair for the York County area committee, later renamed as York East.

She became a national council delegate and it is this standing that has led to her decision to run for one of the top three posts.