A colleague of Minette Batters used to offer her a favourite piece of grandmother’s wisdom: “Things will never be as good as you hope they are going to be and will never be as bad as you fear they are going to be.” In the five years since Batters became the first female president of the National Farmers’ Union, the latter part of that saying has, she says, not been much use at all. “Things have been much worse in the sector than any of us could have imagined,” she says. “We had hard Brexit, the pandemic, and then Russia invaded Ukraine.” Among the most visible results of that tragic trio have been soaring food prices and sometimes empty supermarket shelves, failing farms and labour shortages. Faced with the madness of government ministers suggesting “let them eat turnips” and desperate face-saving “global” trade deals that threaten the livelihoods of her 47,000 members, Batters has been a voice of admirable sanity and composure.
The week in which we meet for lunch is not atypical for her, she says. She’s been up early morning and late at night helping with the lambing at her farm in Wiltshire, as well as keeping on top of her day job at the NFU in London. After a round of media on the latest eye-watering inflation figures that morning, she is due to appear before the environmental audit committee of MPs that afternoon – so, tempting though it is, she won’t have a glass of wine. She is in training for a marathon at the weekend, however, so carbs are welcome.
