Warwickshire farmer Angela Rhodes has taken the role of dairy sector board chairman while Cumbrian livestock farmer and former NFU sector chair Alistair Mackintosh steps in to the beef and lamb role.
Andrew Lewins, the former managing director of Grampian Foods and co-founder of Cranberry Foods, is the new sector chairman for poultry.
All three will play a crucial role in steering policy, highlighting opportunities and threats in their sector, affecting change in farm standards and reacting to evolving consumer demands.
Key responsibilities include leading their sector board and representing it at Assured Food Standards board meetings – the company that operates the Red Tractor scheme.
Meet the chairmen…
Angela is part of a dairy farming family and helps run a 320-cow autumn calving herd with her husband near Southam in Warwickshire. She is a member of Arla’s UK Board of Representatives and its Joint National Council which carries out technical work on behalf of the co-operative. Angela was also involved in the introduction of the global Arlagården Farm Assurance scheme in the UK.
She said: “The consumer spotlight is increasingly focused on all livestock sectors, especially dairy, and farmers need robust farm assurance standards that we can stand behind.
“We need Red Tractor more than ever. With the current political uncertainty we could be facing even more competition on the supermarket shelves from imported products. Now is the time to build up the Red Tractor brand so that it becomes synonymous with safe, good quality, responsibly produced food not only in the UK, but globally. This is our window of opportunity.”
Alistair runs a flock of 1,500 breeding ewes and a herd of 100 beef sucklers in Ravenglass, Cumbria, across 650 rented acres.
“Red Tractor is something that’s absolutely essential to my business and I think it’s a great assurance scheme that gives consumers confidence to buy British, and that’s going to be increasingly important for UK farming,” he said.
“Some of the priorities are reestablishing the core values of what the tractor stands for. Farmers, stakeholders and trade associations have to work together on this to ensure farmers don’t view farm assurance as a regulatory burden and see what it does for their businesses.”
Andrew has worked in the poultry industry for 38 years in a career spanning finance, planning, agriculture, sales and marketing and general management. He also sits on the management board of the British Poultry Council.
He said: “I’ve always been passionate about farm assurance and was the inaugural chairman of the Red Tractor Assurance poultry technical advisory committee which wrote the standards back in 1999.
“I believe that Red Tractor poultry standards are already world-leading and I want to see us shout about that and sell it. As a practical agriculturalist I feel I can help hit that balance between world leading standards and practical implementation on farms.”