Baroness Minette Batters in conversation with Anthony Gibson

Harvest

A farmer’s story of heritage, home and hope

Baroness Minette Batters is an award-winning British farmer who was the president of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales from 2018 to 2024. She has been a member of the House of Lords since 2024, and has run Barford Park Farm for decades. She is one of the most respected voices in British agriculture, advising both farmers and government, and is a columnist for Country Life.

About Harvest

Minette Batters was the first female president of the National Farmers’ Union in its 109-year history. During that time, she fought tooth and nail for the interests of farmers, never afraid to put her head above the parapet.

But Minette’s expertise in British farming spanned many more years than her presidency. In fact, the union was the third act of a life lived at the heart of the farming community: first, she was born and raised on a farm and, even after her father warned her there was no future in farming, her heart brought her home to take over the family farm. In her third act, as advocate for the UK’s farming industry, she became not only a life-long farmer but the most visible agriculture expert in the UK, at a time when Brexit, Covid and international conflict has pushed our farms, and our food production, to a state of crisis. So, who better to understand how British farming really works?

Blending memoir and manifesto, this book will be a powerful insight into the real life of farmers, a love letter to British rural life, and a rallying cry to save it – and how.

Praise for Harvest

As a lifelong farmer and agriculture expert, Minette brings a unique and very real insight into the reality of farming – a must-read.

Jamie Oliver

Her passion for British agriculture shines through in everything she does.

Farmer’s Weekly

One of the few people in public life to come of Brexit with her reputation enhanced – no small feat for a tenant farmer and caterer with a fear of public speaking. A bastion of common sense about how much we needed farmers, she is the most impressive leader farmers have had for a very long time. As the first woman president of the NFU she has transcended agriculture, becoming a powerful voice for things that matter.

James Rebanks

‘Absolutely brilliant. Minette is the busiest person I’ve ever heard of. Never has a book made me feel so inadequate’

Jeremy Clarkson

About Anthony Gibson

Writer, broadcaster, campaigner, Westcountryman.

Anthony Gibson OBE, MA, FRAgS is a Westcountryman, born in Devon, living in Somerset, who has spent most of his working life with the National Farmers Union, including 14 eventful years as its South-West Regional Director.

Gibson has lived and worked in the West Country all his life. He is best known for the pivotal role that he played as South West Regional Director for the National Farmers’ Union in the two great farming crises of the past 40 years: BSE and the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease epidemic.

He was a key player in resolving the seminal clashes between farming and conservation on Exmoor and the Somerset Levels and in negotiating environmental management agreements covering vast areas of Dartmoor.

Besides all that, he has found time to campaign for traditional cider and real ale, to champion West Country food and drink, to explore the relationship between great writers and the West Country landscape and to become the BBC’s ‘voice of Somerset cricket’.