East Bloc will pose the next challenge (From Gazette & Herald)

East Bloc will pose the next challenge

ROSIE Dunn's determination to find positive ways forward for the farming industry has seen her landed with one of the biggest jobs in agriculture in Yorkshire.

For Rosie has been appointed the first chairman of the National Farmers' Union's newly-formed York and East Riding county branch and as such becomes the voice of 1,800 farmers in an area stretching from Boroughbridge across to the north of Scarborough, and down to Howden and Spurn Point, taking in the vast Ryedale area.

She and her husband Alisdair have farmed at North Carlton Farm, Stockton-on-the-Forest, for 14 years on a farm of 112 acres owned by the City of York Council. They have a mixed operation including 140 head of beef cattle, 50 ewes, cereals, sugar beet, and they also undertake contracting work for other farmers. Alisdair further augments the business by some HGV driving.

Rosie has been involved in farming all her life, with her family, the Magsons, farming at Knapton. "A big highlight of my life as a child was to go to Malton and Seamer markets. We used to put calves in the back of our old Morris Oxford and take them to market," she laughs.

Rosie started work with Roland Stephenson at Scampston, where she worked with point-to-point horses and was eventually asked to stay on, tractor driving and leading hay. She later worked for the Knapton Hall Estate and for Yates of Malton before marrying Alisdair who was then a farm manager.

The couple hunted for a farm tenancy, eventually securing one in Cambridgeshire from the county council. "It was 70 acres of grass and wild oats. It was very tough but it was a first step on the ladder."

Rosie made her mark in the Derwent and Shipton branches of the NFU and her skills found her being made chairman of the organisation's county livestock and sugar beet committees. She was then chosen to speak for the farming industry along with NFU president Ben Gill in a delegation to Brussels to put the case for lifting the ban on UK beef to Europe.

She sees the enlargement of the EU to take in Eastern Bloc countries as one of the biggest challenges to the British farming industry, because of the cheap production costs.

"We are going to have to move away from production led subsidies to environment subsidies," believes Rosie, who is only the second woman to hold such high office in the NFU in North Yorkshire. The first, Helen Swiers of Broxa, followed in the footsteps of her late husband, Chris, by becoming chairman of both the North Riding County and the Scarborough branches.

A key point for North Yorkshire's farming is the new broad and shallow, agri-environment scheme which has come out of the Curry Report she says.

As a stalwart of the NFU she is convinced of its influential role both now and in the future. "Without the NFU, agriculture in this country would be in a mess" she says, adding that 68pc of farmers are now members.

"There are big problems in farming. We can't go on producing for less than the cost of production. We have to pick up the gauntlet for farming and fortunately there are many like-minded people throughout the industry who like me, are determined to see it succeed..."

Updated: 11:02 Wednesday, January 08, 2003