How To Deliver The Promised Land

The new CLA president on farming’s future and landowner responsibility

- Tim Breitmeyer

CLA presidents come in many estate sizes and guises—art collector, motorbiker, falconer and climber, to name more recent incumbents—but it’s been a few years since this rural business body was headed by a major arable farmer from East Anglia. Tim Breitmeyer, a racquets and real-tennis player and a passionate Africa traveller who was officially endorsed last week and is very much his own man, is visibly going to present a different stamp again.

‘The defining element of my presidency will be helping Government put elements in place to make British farming more profitable after Brexit,’ he says. ‘We’re going to have to help people run their farms as businesses and not ways of life.’

His words are competing with the deafening buffeting of Storm Ophelia as we inspect a vast grain store whose labyrinth of vertiginous ladders and platforms would lend itself to a James Bond film set. Windy creaking aside, everything is orderly: shiny tractors as tall as double-decker buses, their cabs glowing like aeroplane cockpits; precisely planted winter crops stretching into the eerie orange light; yellow roses in the courtyard of a piggery converted to business units; tidy woodland surrounding an ancient burial ground; and wildlife-friendly strips and a wildflower meadow.

It’s a surprise, therefore, to hear Mr Breitmeyer say pessimistically: ‘Margins are very, very tight. It’s questionable as to whether what we’ve grown will ultimately be profitable. Many farmers around here are saying that the only money is in diversification—and we’re supposed to be the big guys.’