It’s a cartoon-worthy, perfect spring day at Minette Batters’ rambling red-brick farm in south Wiltshire, the spire of Salisbury Cathedral peeping in the distance from her favourite vantage point. “I defy anyone not to think that this is the best time of year,” she says. “You’ve survived the winter and have the joy of new life. It makes you feel incredibly fortunate.” It has now been two years since the 58-year-old stepped down as president of the National Farmers Union (NFU): the first and only woman to hold the post in its 118-year history.

Crossbench peer

Since finishing her six-year stint as the voice of nearly 50,000 farming businesses, she’s been appointed as a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, led the Farming Profitability Review commissioned by Defra (that outlines 57 recommendations to improve farm resilience and productivity, and has been credited with the softening of the inheritance tax reforms for farms) and found time to pen a book in the margins. Then there are her Continental-cross suckler herd, her sheep, some arable and a busy wedding venue on the farm – as well as her twin children Holly and George to find time for. “My kids think I’m bonkers,” she laughs. “When I was doing the profitability review last year, I tagged every single calf in our spring calving herd either before I went to London or when I got back. It keeps you grounded.”

Growing up with her brother on this 300-acre farm where her father Richard Hill had taken on the tenancy in 1972, Batters was enamoured by the animals. She was calving whenever she could, hunting with the Wilton (Hill was hunt secretary and her mother Bridget chairman) and eventually eventing to advanced level. In her early twenties she began riding out for local trainer David Elsworth – a heyday when Desert Orchid was on the yard – riding 30 point-to-point winners: the first on the same day that the Elsworth-trained Rhyme ’n’ Reason won the 1988 Grand National.

Horses nor farming

Batters’ father was adamant that neither horses nor farming were viable careers, so she trained as a chef and set up her own catering business. “But being told you can’t do something definitely focuses your mind,” she smiles, and by the age of 32 she’d sold her house and negotiated to take on the farm tenancy herself. “Everyone thought it was completely mad. Farming wasn’t in the best place and it was very run-down here.” Was she daunted? “At that age, I just thought it was hugely exciting. A bit like racing, you thrive on the adrenaline.” However, there were hurdles. “I remember a lorry driver coming here with a delivery. He asked to see the boss, and when I told him that was me he replied: ‘I mean a man, love.’ When I brought the loader back, he still had the tarpaulin shut.”

Over the next two decades, Batters rose through the ranks of the NFU, and in 2018 with a bursting in-tray – including post-Brexit trade deals, the climate crisis and mental health problems among the farming community – she was appointed president. “There were people who said that as a tenant farmer and a woman I would never be able to command the same respect as a man. It really hurt at the time. I felt enormous pressure not to fail,” she admits.

Plan for farming

Over her tenure she worked with four Prime Ministers and six Defra Secretaries of State. There was President Trump embarking on his first term to contend with, COVID-19 and the invasion of Ukraine. “At the time it felt relentless,” she says. But it was the lack of priority that food production and farming were given that left her flabbergasted. “I still find it bizarre that [the Government] doesn’t have a meaningful plan for farming or food because here we are again facing enormous global shocks. The cost of gas and fuel is skyrocketing. There’s so much more we could be doing with farming that would build resilience. I recently visited a dairy exporting green gas to well over 6,000 homes in the nearby town. Imagine if every dairy could do that?”

When Batters became president she made campaigning a priority: “The NFU hadn’t been a campaigning organisation at all, and I felt strongly that we needed to be selling what we are rather than what we want all the time,” she explains. The most recent NFU Farmer Favourability survey published last September found farming came second only to nursing as the most valued profession for the third year running: “Seeing that change made me feel all the campaigning made a difference.” Another triumph was launching the NFU food standards petition in 2020. This demanded that UK food imports maintain the same high environmental and animal welfare standards as British producers. It attracted more than one million signatures.

Marathon running

Decades of eye-wateringly early mornings show no sign of easing: she’s a marathon runner (“I’m now running faster than I was 10 years ago”), a trustee of the GWCT, a director of Salisbury Racecourse and the independent chair of British Racing’s Horse Welfare Board. She’s also just extended her lease on the farm for another 25 years. “I don’t know whether my children will ever farm because they’ve looked at me and thought ‘Why would we do that?’ Farming tests you. I remember being charged by a cow against a tree and if I hadn’t moved the second time that she went to charge she would have killed me. You do ask yourself why you want to do it at all. But you can’t replace it. It’s something that’s in your DNA.”

Minette Batters’ new book, Harvest (Ebury Press, £22), will be published on 28 May.