15-11-2017
On
14th October, several Directors and members of the Livestock team, along with a group of Dovecote Park producers attended
the 9th Waitrose Farming Conference at Telford International Conference Centre.
On
14th October, several Directors and members of the Livestock team, along with a group of Dovecote Park producers attended
the 9th Waitrose Farming Conference at Telford International Conference Centre.
This
was the first Conference since the retirement of Heather Jenkins, Director of Meat Poultry, Dairy, Fish & Frozen and
Director of Agricultural, many of her colleagues paid tribute to the work she had done during her 25 years at Waitrose. This was also our introduction to Paul Walker, who has taken
over her role along with his own and is Director of Buying Fresh. Paul will be coming to visit us at Dovecote Park in the New Year.
The
conference welcomed over 400 producers from the meat, dairy, fish and fresh produce sectors, and saw presentations from a number of key industry figures and Waitrose senior managers.
The days focus was around resilience and sustainability and managing an uncertain future post Brexit.
During
the afternoon the winners of the
Waitrose Farming Awards, were announced for the six categories: Future Proofing, Innovation, Inspiration and Leadershp, Partnership and Engagement,
Environmental Sustainability and Young Farmer.
The
Livestock team nominate a producer for each of the categories and we were delighted to see several of our producers recognised among the nominees – Ian Farrant in the Young Farmer category, Peter and Mark Hutchinson for
Future Proofing, and James Scoones in the sector of Partnership and Engagement.
Not
only did James Scoones go on to win for Partnership and Engagement, but he was also awarded the prize of ‘Waitrose Farmer of the Year’ – a new category for 2017, and a surprise to all of us.
James
(pictured above with Waitrose Managing Director Rob Collins) has been rearing veal for Waitrose since before we moved to Pontefract over 25 years ago, he buys the dairy male calves from the Waitrose dairy supplying farms via our Cattle Connect chain and rears
over 3,500 calves to under 7 months for us on a high welfare system. He is the biggest single producer of veal in the UK – needless to say we are delighted to share in his reflected glory!