A call from the Prime Minister on election day comes as a surprise, heralding an unforeseen return to the Defra office.
It was July 4 — election day — and I’d managed to grab a rare 15 minutes to sit down and eat a lunchtime sandwich. My phone was on silent, but it vibrated. I glanced down to see the name come up as Rishi Sunak. My initial thought was that the wretched scammers will stop at nothing, even having the audacity to pretend to be the (then) Prime Minister.
I cautiously answered the call: ‘Hi Minette, it’s Rishi. I’m announcing my dissolution honours tonight and I’ve managed to get your cross-bench peerage over the line, too.’ It’s a rare occurrence, but I was speechless. The last time we’d spoken was in March, when he’d first mentioned the idea — an equally surreal moment, as I was standing under the clock at Waterloo station. I presumed I would never hear another word — certainly nothing prepared me for a call from the PM on election day.
I first met Mr Sunak in August 2022 when I was NFU president. I feel humbled, privileged and somewhat surprised, but I’ll relish the opportunity to bring the voice of farming to Parliament. I formally become a crossbench peer this month, with my introduction in early September. I’ve received so many wonderful letters and messages from friends, well wishers, civil servants and politicians, including a congratulatory text from the new Defra Secretary Steve Reed, saying he was looking forward to working with me and did I have time to meet him and the new Food and Rural Affairs Minister Daniel Zeichner. Two weeks later, I found myself back in Defra.
My main message to them both was the need for a paradigm shift; that Nature and food cannot continue to be seen as mutually exclusive if the UK is to meet its obligations under the Environment Act, as well as avoiding the huge risk of offshoring our food production in a politically and climatically unstable world. Bringing food, Nature and biodiversity net-gain (FNBNG) outcomes into food-producing landscapes would be a global first. Delivering the triumvirate together will have a transformational impact on Nature recovery and food and water security.
The current legal obligation for achieving FNBNG is far too narrow, especially when viewed alongside Labour’s plans for building many more houses. However, imagine if developers and communities could be given choice and drive investment into new allotments, orchards or regenerative agriculture. Permanent pastures could be valued not only for their sequestered carbon, but also for the biodiversity benefits of grazing livestock. Glasshouses could be heated from waste hot water in cities and produce more of our salad crops in the early part of the year.
Some 72% of the UK is farmland — with the right policies and incentives, farmers are the vanguard of change this Labour government needs to work with if they’re to achieve their goals.
At home on the farm, I sometimes question whether my competitive nature is what attracted me to farming in the first place. There’s something eminently rewarding about getting a job done when the odds are firmly stacked against you. You feel euphoric when you pull it off, but deeply depressed when events conspire against you — an outdoor office is always going to be problematic.
Recently, I was out to dinner with friends when my daughter Holly called to say she’d just walked the dogs and did I know there was a dead calf? I’d seen the group of cows and calves three hours earlier and all had been fine. I returned to find the poor mum mooing forlornly at her dead calf, three months old and looking in the peak of health. An unexplained quick death is usually down to a clostridial infection such as blackleg. These things have a habit of happening out of ‘office hours’.
I managed to move the calf singlehandedly — it was nearly double my weight — into the bucket of our loader and get it out of the field. Next morning, I messaged our local hunt kennels, who replied saying they’d gone to The Game Fair and to call the kennelman. Within an hour, Nick arrived in the yard to collect the calf.
Losing a life is the hardest part of livestock farming, but the welfare service provided 24/7 by local veterinary practices and that of hunt kennels needs far greater recognition in the corridors of power across Whitehall. It’s a sadness that so many private vet practices, following our care homes, have been swallowed up by private equity enterprises. It’s leading to ever greater consolidation of farm vet practices, which will result in a depleted service at a time when we need to see more farm vets, not fewer.
Minette Batters was president of the NFU for six years. She farms beef cattle and runs a rural business in Wiltshire
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