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? But doing it well means really working collaboratively with everybody in the food and farming sector. 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. RT @RainNewtonSmith: Great podcast with the brilliant @Minette_Batters of @NFUtweets passionate about the role of farmers in nature restoration, energy and food security. I remember going to bed on referendum night and texting our Director of Strategy, Martin Howarth, who has been with the NFU a long time, and was in our London Office. She said: "Back in 2009, my friend Minette Batters and I saw that positive messages about Red Tractor-assured British beef were not getting through to the consumer. 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. Views expressed in this piece are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of UK in a Changing Europe. I guess we always felt, in those early days, that a good Brexit effectively made agriculture the poster child of post-Brexit Britain. So, its now going to be brought into the funding cycle of Parliament. I havent been able to get a meeting with Lord Frost yet. I think it is always challenging when you work with a majority government. I think most definitely, in the run-up to those no deals, many farmers were thinking, This really does look terrifying. The Department for International Trade, of course, is focused on getting trade deals done. You have to go there with what I used to describe to Michael a magpie moment, the glittery jewel that makes government think, Oh yes, that looks exciting. What does that look like?. We know that farmers took different views on the referendum, what were people really thinking about in that run-up to the 2016 referendum? I guess its knowing that you are going into a period of enormous change, but that change hasnt actually happened yet. Scoops about National Farmers Union . And this, I think, still remains a very complex political issue. Youve got Liz Truss leading on trade with the rest of the world. Its only when commodity prices are impacted, and the future support mechanism is changed- if that isnt right, that is when things will start to erupt, and that is what weve got to try and avoid. Dont forget, Michael Gove did not hold back in this arena, he is well documented and publicised. So, he did, in the early days, in 2019, sign up to the importance of the Trade and Agriculture Commission, writing in ink that he agreed with the concept and would look to establish such a body. Minette is published in almost 40 countries and has sold in excess of 25,000,000 copies of her books worldwide. Of course, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) believed so strongly in Brexit. UKICE: Do you think the Department for International Trade and Defra now have a unified view, or is this battle still being played out within government, as opposed to outside government? So, there is a lot of water, I would say, to go under the bridge before that question can be answered. Weve worked very closely with them throughout, so weve always known that it is a very, very difficult area. IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. I thought, Gosh, were leaving the CAP and what is this? MB: No, it wasnt. Walters was the first crime/thriller writer to win three major prizes with her first three books. When you look at this country, 70% of it is rural. I have to say, at that time, that was so needed, because we had to work through a process. UKICE: Chequers obviously didnt go anywhere and sunk at the Salzburg Summit, but Theresa May does land a Withdrawal Agreement and Parliament is not passing it. 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. He was there as Minister of State for Farming beforehand, under Michael, so we knew George very, very well. She said: "Back in 2009, my friend Minette Batters and I saw that positive messages about Red Tractor-assured British beef were not getting through to the MB: I still think that is undecided, effectively. At this moment in time, its lacking in detail as to what the future scheme looks like. Set in the 14th century at the time of the bubonic plague, The Last Hours took several years to research and write. As her father was a serving army officer, the first 10 years of Walters's life were spent moving between army bases in the north and south of England. We cant have one standard for one and not for another. MB: I think, genuinely, probably nobody wanted it to play out how its played out, which has been long and protracted and divisive. We wanted government to put its money where its mouth was. Did you target any of the backbenchers who were holding out? 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. Weve obviously got a lot of trucks coming over and a lot of trucks going back empty. That, above all else, United Kingdom farmers remained the number one supplier of choice to their own marketplace. 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. Of course, getting your voice heard in all of this was quite a challenge, I think, for the goods sector. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of [7], In addition to full-length novels, Walters has written feature articles for magazines and the broadsheets, some short stories including "English Autumn, American Fall", and two novellas, The Tinder Box (1999), and Chickenfeed (2006). In fact, weve probably actively driven away people from some sectors. UKICE: But they still prioritised doing deals with the US, though maybe receded slightly. MB: There is a lot of talk that says farmers voted unanimously Leave, but I dont think they were any different to anyone else at all. WebMinette met her husband Alec Walters while she was at Durham and they married in 1978. Were you very engaged with what the UK was looking for in the TCA on that? abril 26, 2023 0 Visualizaes jason elliott, newsom. Walters joined IPC Magazines as a sub-editor in As part of the British project 'Quick Reads', to encourage literacy amongst adults with reading difficulties, Walters wrote a 20,000-word novella called Chickenfeed. [13], Walters' first five books were adapted for television by the BBC and her eighth book, Acid Row, is currently[when?] So a no deal meant that we would be dealing with the EU the same way as we would be dealing with the rest of the world in the absence of any trade deals. With Theresa May, it was about trying to say, Were here, dont forget agriculture, because its going to be the complex area. But ultimately, there were two sides to all of this, and the UK wasnt the only party in the negotiations. That was quite a moment of recognition for me. There are a lot of high standards in America. Again, it was the engagement with Number 10 that got the global seasonal scheme of 30,000 over the line. UKICE: Rather intriguingly, George Eustice, given his background, put down one of the indicative votes proposing UK accession to EFTA. WebMinette runs a tenanted family farm in Wiltshire. Menu. Which means there were nearly a billion less eggs produced in 2022 compared to 2019. And that still remains the challenge. In all these challenges, we knew that any border would have to be in the Irish Sea. After a pause of 10 years in which she wrote two novellas, Walters has decided to write historical novels. It has also been translated into several languages. When I see the out-of-home sector has been offline, with everybody buying products out of retail, prices in the red meat are pretty good because retail has become very loyal to British sourcing, because the British consumer has demanded it. 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. The series was won by the actress Sherrie Hewson, whose debut novel The Tannery was published in March 2009. I cant speak for the Ulster Farmers Union. If were going to continue with a policy that is about raising standards in this country, and not asking the same for other countries, thats going to have big impact on our farmers and on our food system. At the end of the day, you can have the best policy in the world, but if you cant deliver it, its a disaster for Treasury, its a disaster for farmers. 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. airline pilot retirement age 70; what happened to mark reilly strong island; east carolina dean's list spring 2021; the frequency table shows the distribution of 1,200 students; lessons on stealing for students; MB: Lord Frost has been the difficult one to date. 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. Wedding and Corporate events venue. They have two sons: Roland, who is married to Charlotte, and Philip, who is married to Sarah: and three granddaughters: Madeleine, Martha and Hermione. How are you going to do that? MB: In the end, as Deputy President of the NFU, I did take a public position, which was that, on the information we had, we would be better off remaining in the EU. UKICE: We saw the very hostile reaction from EU political leaders to Chequers, but I wondered whether you got any sense from your sister bodies in France, Denmark, Netherlands, places that were concerned about UK lowering standards and the implications for that on agri-food farming, that they thought Chequers was quite a clever wheeze? 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. Helped by her husband Edwin and son George, Jilly manages 600 acres on the River Exe floodplain, raising native breeds like South Devons and Red Polls. [5] The first of these novels is The Last Hours, set during the Black Death, followed by a sequel, The Turn of Midnight. If we dont do that, we will see things rotting in the fields, simply because we havent got the capability to pick them. What we are seeing played out and its showing more with fish is that groupage is really difficult. They have two sons: Roland, who is married to Charlotte, and Philip, who is married to 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. We had an extraordinary meeting of our council, which is our sovereign body, made up of two representatives, effectively, from every county across England and Wales. 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. That worked, because everybody opened the doors and said, Really? 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. Scotland is talking about maintaining the same levels of direct support, so an area-based payment linked to sustainable farming. I think the EU member states were always going to be deeply suspicious of us lowering food standards. Michael Gove was perhaps not in his most ideal Cabinet seat, but I think he did manage to rebrand himself with what had been deemed to be a graveyard department, to the benefit of the department. He had said, on behalf of the NFU, that it was in farmings best interests to join the Common Market. Yet, we were seeing no sign of deregulating. UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE): Were now about five months into the end of the transition, five months into the new global migration scheme. Or did they think it was just a completely unacceptable attempt to cherry-pick the single market? Baroness McIntosh of Pickering with NFU Vice President Its sort of backfiring at the moment, and we still, I think, really need to know what the future is going to look like, and where the improvements are going to be. But weve got to be able to do it in a way that has the right policies in place to deliver whats needed. For me, the issue was, How do we pivot this back to the policies that are needed for sustainable food production?. Everybody was putting down these legal markers, effectively. I remember sitting opposite him at a Sector Food Council meeting and George Eustice remembers this, I might add, as clearly as I do, because he was in the room, and Liam Fox saying, Brexit is going to be great, because we can bring in cheap raw ingredients and add value to them under the Union Jack. It means that the future absolutely has to be got right, and delivery has to work. Within four months, it had won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey award for best first novel[3] and had been snapped up by 11 foreign publishers. 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 . Are those scare stories, or is there a significant issue with labour shortages? So that, with as free and frictionless trade as could be achieved, was something that we all believed in then and we all believe in now. I went out to the Republic of Ireland to the massive ploughing match that they have, talked with the Irish Farmers Association, as we have done for our entire time, within COPA-COGECA, and also visited the Northern Ireland border and our colleagues in UFU. Chequers, I think brought a level of understanding. The Australian head negotiator heads up the Trans-Pacific negotiations as well. WebMinette Batters NFU President Minette runs a tenanted family farm in Wiltshire. Was the move to George Eustice an easy transition? What we must avoid is a two-tier food system. I think its essential that we can meet with him, bearing in mind weve still got active engagement with member states trying to resolve these issues. I think the commitment was to get over 80% of the trade done in the term of this Parliament. Still, the same Chequers discussions are being played out. Minette was the first crime/thriller writer to win three major prizes with her first three books. In competition with works by other best-selling authors, such as Ruth Rendell, Maeve Binchy and Joanna Trollope, Chickenfeed has won two awards as the best novella in the Quick Reads genre. Minette Batters, who is the president of the National Farmers Union (NFU) of England and Wales and has been called the most powerful farmer in the UK, was There are different moving parts to all of these things that, I think, make it a challenge to resolve. Or did you, at that stage, think, This is so catastrophic, its just not going to happen? Did you get a sense they had very different priorities for the future? But then he left. Walters's second novel, The Sculptress, which was inspired in part by an encounter Walters had as a volunteer prison visitor,[2] won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award. 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. We need a really transparent approach to how agriculture fits in all of this. Her novels are often set against real backgrounds and real events to draw her readers into the 'reality' of what she is writing about. What we have to recognise is none of these things can be done in isolation. She supplemented her salary by writing romantic novelettes, short stories, and serials in her 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. MB: I can remember being on the Today programme, in Broadcasting House, with Michael Gove being interviewed, when he published the Agricultural Bill. Whitehall has driven so much of EU rules and regulations for agriculture and the environment, so when we bring it back home, weve got to be able to make sure that it works across those four countries. WebMinette met her husband Alec Walters while she was at Durham and they married in 1978. That in itself was controversial with some of our members, but the expertise wasnt in the UK, economic analysis of trade deals was something the European Commission was responsible for. 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. MB: I think there was an element of thinking, They can never do this, because it will be so bad. Its worth pointing out that, at that time, there was not even one side of policy on A4 of what leaving the EU would look like. Im not so sure. Because of the size of our population, because of the size of the sector, food and farming employs one in eight people. That was the challenge. In competition with works by other best-selling authors, such as Ruth Rendell, Maeve Binchy and Joanna Trollope, Chickenfeed has won two awards as the best novella in the 'Quick Reads' genre. MB: No, I think its an enormous challenge within government. How does it feel for the industry? UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE): Michael Gove was a relatively long-serving Defra Secretary of State, by Defra standards. We convened our council, our sovereign body, again, at a special meeting in London. Minette 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. The NFU launched a levelling-up report, because when we look at the whole levelling-up agenda, it cant just be about north versus south, weve got to look at opportunity across the whole country. If government is going to introduce legislation on higher welfare, it needs to effectively put its money where its mouth is, and make sure that our procurement is only sourcing at those standards. We knew that, during Theresa Mays time at the Home Office, she ended the global scheme, and that had been an exemplar scheme. Minettes goal is to make history as exciting and readable as any of her psychological crime thrillers. Webshreveport obituaries minette batters family. MB: Covid, in many ways, with food supply, helped, actually, because the engagement was there with agriculture and food and government. Stephen Sackur talks to Minette Batters, The authoritative source for independent research on UK-EU relations, President, National Farmers Union February 2018 Present, Deputy President, National Farmers Union February 2014 February 2018. Her father died from kidney failure in 1960. The EU are now really having these positive conversations, and the Commission has come out positively, saying, Actually, on plant breeding, weve got to look at the opportunities around that resistant crop. This has been a political decision by the EU and, to a certain extent, their line is, Well, we didnt want you to leave, were entitled to make it difficult. But it was always going to need a bespoke model. Fundamentally, we need to be producing much more of our fruit and veg here. We had implemented laws that were based on food values, and yet we werent prepared to look at that in other parts of the world. MB: There was an element of, Goodness, what is this going to look like? What we want is four countries that are doing, effectively, the same thing, otherwise we will distort our own internal market. Here's some advice. 30 Apr 2023 11:52:44 It took two and a half years to write and was rejected by numerous publishing houses until Macmillan Publishers, bought it for 1250. Worst of all, you didnt know whether you had a market. WebOn 19 April our Environmental Change & #FoodSecurity inquiry heard from @HenryDimbleby; @Minette_Batters, @NFUtweets; Peter Dawson, @dairyuk; @suepritch, @FFC_Commission; and Chris Brown, @asda. Where the UK/ GB exporters face the full battery of checks going into the EU, and EU exporters are waved through at the UK border. That, again, has been driven by Covid, because weve not been eating out in pubs or restaurants, everybody has bought everything out of retail. Theyve been long-term involved in the impact assessment for these trade deals, so they know what is needed. Youve got all the challenges with Stranraer and other places about access points. [citation needed]. I definitely felt that was a moment in time. bubble tea consumption statistics australia. MB: What wed been talking about, accepting that we were no longer going to be a part of the Single Market, was how free and frictionless trade was needed on both sides. Did you go back and say to the NFU, This is what we now need to do? We use cookies to enhance your user experience. UKICE: Did you get a sense that government actually appreciated the lengths of those lead times in farming? Minette Batters (MB): It was interesting, wasnt it, when Theresa May came in? This doesnt talk about farming, this doesnt talk about food. Walters was born in Bishop's Stortford in 1949 to Samuel Jebb and Colleen Jebb. And yet the NFU ultimately came out to support Remain, but would not campaign for it. 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. 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. Do you get the sense that this is a long-term policy, that the Government doesnt want to invest in the border? It doesnt mean to say that it wont come back, but its going to take a lot of working together. Minette Batters (MB): Well, George has been in Defra a long time. The National Farmers' Union (NFU) is demanding a written guarantee from the government that Brexit won't undermine British farming standards. So, he was very prepared to roll up his sleeves. 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. Set in the 17th century, it explores the division and devastation of the English Civil War. We didnt want protection of our food standards written in blood, we just wanted it put in ink. But with his unfrozen moment speech and things like that, were you worried that he was veering too much in that direction, and wasnt taking full account of the needs of food security or valuing food production? So, I think we pretty soon realised that this was going to be difficult. And Australias big, offensive asks on beef, certainly, maybe lamb. Within four months, it had won the Crime Writers Association John Creasey award for best first novel and had been snapped up by 11 foreign publishers. The union's president Minette Batters will make the call at their conference later today amid growing concerns about the implications of Brexit for farming - whether a deal is struck or not. So, I think we engaged on every level. But our strawberries, our raspberries, our asparagus, our blueberries, are reliant on the dexterity of the human hand. She turned freelance in 1977 but continued to write for magazines to cover her bills. So, we kicked off this campaign. Weve now got the two licences in place for that. Officials suddenly became very energised, because they had someone who was really digging in on every area of detail. So, Australia is really just the start of what this is going to look like. But what I did see very quickly with Michael was someone who was very prepared to dive down into every area of technical detail and grasp it. Did you think, I need this like a hole in the head, I could just go back to my farm and live a quiet life, rather than get stuck into this political morass? 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. How were you involved in no deal preparations? Tom Bradshaw NFU Deputy President Tom farms in partnership with his wife, Emily, and his parents in North Essex. All sorts of different people, in different places, dealing with different things. Were still developing the thinking, still influencing, and with the academics and the science community working with us, we are making huge progress. 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.

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