Minette Batters: ‘I feared farmers would be used as a pawn in trade deals – and that’s what happened’
There are few jobs that allow you to see the fruits of your labours, season after season. Minette Batters has one of them. She has been producing beef, lamb and crops on 150 hectares (370 acres) in south Wiltshire for almost a quarter of a century – the place where she grew up and which was farmed for decades by her parents.
“The fences weren’t here. The barn didn’t have a roof, it was derelict,” says Batters, recalling the state of the farm when she began running it in 1998.
It wasn’t a given that she would take over the tenancy from her parents. She convinced the landlords to give her a chance by promising to renovate two dilapidated 17th-century farm cottages, in exchange for taking on the land and buildings.
In the years since, she has restored the cottages, turned the once-roofless building into a chic wedding venue, and increased her herd from 15 suckler cows to 100. “It was a pretty challenging business starting off,” Batters says, as her 10-year-old dog, Basil, scampers alongside. “It’s been a life’s work. People ask, ‘Why would you do all this when you don’t own it?’”
Age 54
Family Divorced, 17-year-old twins.
Education A-Levels at Wiltshire Technical College. Trained as a chef in London, completing a Cordon Bleu diploma. Ran her own catering business for weddings and large parties across the south of England for 25 years, in parallel with farming, until becoming NFU president.
Pay Undisclosed, but it allows to keep her farm running in her absence. She says: “We are a not-for-profit organisation. I’m not there to make money out of the NFU.”
Last holiday Woolacombe in Devon last summer.
Best advice she’s been given “The adage which has had more influence on my life is, ‘You make your own luck.’ I keep saying to my kids:
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