The NFU’s new Regional Director for the North East will be a familiar face to many in the farming community, having previously spent two years working closely with local livestock and dairy producers.
Adam Bedford has worked for the NFU locally, nationally and internationally for the last nine years, most recently heading up the British Agriculture Bureau – the NFU’s permanent office in Brussels.
He returns to the North East as Regional Director from Monday 4 April and says he is very much looking forward to swopping pavements for pastures new.
Born and brought up in West Yorkshire, he studied at Askham Bryan College and Newcastle University’s School of Agriculture before joining the NFU as a graduate trainee in 2007.
This allowed him to spend time at NFU Headquarters in Warwickshire and work with the North West team for a spell before joining NFU North East in 2010 as senior policy adviser, focusing on livestock and dairy.
He moved to Brussels in 2012 and took on the role of Bureau Director three years later.
Commenting on his new challenge, he said: “The North East region, taking in Yorkshire, Durham, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland, is a hugely diverse farming area, where small family farms still predominate.
“With 60 per cent of the farmed area classed as uplands, a large tenanted sector and meat, dairy and cereal and horticultural producers all well represented, we are lucky to have such diversity and our job at the NFU is to do everything possible to help those businesses thrive.
“The significant challenges facing UK agriculture are well documented with unrelenting price volatility, unpredictable weather patterns and increasingly arduous regulation.
“Helping local farmers rise to these challenges is clearly our top priority, however I am also looking forward to encouraging and celebrating the innovation and creativity to be found on so many farms across the patch.
“There is undoubtedly a lot to be done in the short and longer term but we must not lose sight of the opportunities there are for North East farmers and growers providing top quality food and a world-renowned farmed environment for a public increasingly interested in the contribution our industry can make.”
