Pembrokeshire farmer Mansel Raymond was presented with the Farmers' Union of Wales/HSBC award to the person who has made an outstanding contribution to the Welsh dairy industry at the Welsh Dairy Show near Carmarthen on Tuesday.
On behalf of the judges, Welsh Dairy Show chairman Lynn Davies said it had been an extremely difficult task to choose the winner as the nominations submitted were of an extremely high standard with several worthy of the award.
Together with the other judges, FUW Carmarthen county chairman Catherine Nakielny and HSBC agricultural manager Sarah Williams, he encouraged those involved in the dairy sector to re-submit their unsuccessful nominees for consideration next year.
Mr Raymond, whose name was put forward for the award by NFU Cymru, farms 3,400 acres near Letterston in partnership with his twin brother Meurig, their wives, son and nephew. They have two dairy herds totalling 620 cows plus youngstock and a herd of beef cattle.
Arable cropping consists of winter barley, winter wheat, oilseed rape and malting barley as well as potatoes. During the winter up to 2,000 store lambs are fattened.
In 1994 Mansel Raymond was elected a representative to the Milk Marque area council, in 1999 he was elected farmer director to Axis Milk Limited, in 2000 he was elected to sit on the Dairy Council and also became a Farmer Director of First Milk Limited.
He has also been a farmer director of the Haverfordwest Cheese company and vice chairman of the 300 cow club.
He has held a number of NFU Cymru and NFU positions, including chairman of the NFU Cymru Milk Board for a number of years and vice chairman of the NFU England and Wales milk committee.
He is currently NFU England and Wales Dairy Board chairman, chairman of the Copa-Cogeca dairy committee (representing numerous farming organisations across Europe), sits on the EU Commission advisory group for the sector and represents Welsh and English farmers on the UK Dairy Supply Chain Forum.
He has provided evidence to National Assembly committees on behalf of Welsh dairy producers and regularly lobbies Welsh AMs, MPs and MEPs on behalf of the industry.
As chairman of the Copa-Cogeca dairy committee he has lobbied on behalf of EU dairy producers to ensure that the specific views of the dairy industry were taken into account during CAP reform negotiations.
In 2012, he was involved in securing agreement with Dairy UK on a voluntary code of practice on dairy contracts.
Following the signing of the agreement, he continues to meet all the major milk processors to try to ensure they sign up to the principles of the code.
He has also been an active participant in meetings of the Dairy Coalition set up in July 2012 that has delivered a very effective and successful joint industry campaign with the aim of delivering fair milk prices for dairy farmers.
The coalition continues to meet regularly and earlier this year he wrote to the Welsh, Defra and Scottish ministers to request their support in putting pressure on milk buyers operating outside the voluntary code of practice on dairy contracts.
In 2005 he was awarded the MBE for services to Welsh agriculture.
