My family have been farming in this country for over 180 years ( and who knows how long in Ireland and Scotland before that)

My childhood experience of life on the farm left me with the impression that farming was the most undervalued profession in the world ( 50 years on I am wiser and sadly there are lots of professions as undervalued as farmers ).

This childhood experience encouraged me to choose a profession where I and the people I worked with were truly valued. And I did just that. In my day working in pharmacy was extraordinarily rewarding and people acknowledged that. I can remember one Christmas where we couldn’t find enough room for all the Christmas cards from the pharmacy’s customers in our lounge room and I put on 2kgs from the boxes of chocolates of thanks that came my way at Christmas,

For the last fifteen years I have been using my 25 years of experience in a truly rewarding profession to endeavour through as many innovative ways as I can to generate the same acknowledgement for farmers and its been a long haul . There have been many successes ( salute to the Young Farming Champions ) and a number of ongoing disappointments.