Farming Conference 2021/22

Graham is a Partner of The Andersons Centre, author of the John Nix Farm Management Pocketbook and a Director of Agro Business Consultants.

He has been an agricultural economist at The Andersons Centre since 2004. He provides specialist agri-business research services, to public and private organisations alike. These include training, briefings, agricultural modeling and lead project-work. The Andersons Centre is a multi-disciplined farming and agribusiness consultancy, providing advice and interpretation to all sectors in the agricultural supply chain.

Before joining Andersons, Graham was the economist for a major agricultural merchant, focussing chiefly on grain and animal feed marketing providing guidance to the grain trading and grain procurement teams. Prior to that, he was a farm management consultant for a national firm in Central and Southern England. He has worked extensively on several types of farm.

Graham has agricultural degrees from Leeds and Reading Universities.

He is a Council Member for the Institute of Agricultural Management and a Chartered Environmentalist.

Pat is a tax consultant lecturer at Mercia Group.

Pat originally trained and worked in the profession for Ernst & Young, Grant Thornton and KPMG before moving to the University of Derby as their senior tax lecturer. Her time at Derby included undergraduate and professional tax training as well as being involved in examinations and publishing projects for ACCA and other professional bodies.

This led to a ten year period with the Financial Training Company now Kaplan where she was Tax Product Director for the Midlands as well as becoming well known as a prominent exam based tax lecturer. Over her career Pat has been actively involved in the tax professional bodies including serving as a Council member for 12 years for the Association of Taxation Technicians.

Jeremy is Secretary and Adviser to the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers and an independent adviser.

Bob is a tax partner with MHA MacIntyre Hudson and is deeply involved in tax training.

However, he is not just a trainer as he has remained involved in client facing matters so he has seen the risk from the tax engagement grow over the years. He has a wide range of tax knowledge and has been lecturing on a range of tax related subjects for over 25 years including the PII aspects. He has found that tax has become ten times as complex since he started lecturing.

Bob has written a Tax Procedures Manual to help reduce risk for the tax practice and has regularly contributed to articles on technical tax subjects over the years.

Having previously been a Partner within a regional firm of chartered accountants, David is now an independent consultant. He is an agriculture subject matter expert for the ICAEW farming community and also writes assignments and lectures for firms within the sector. He has his own small farm which he has expanded with a mixture of arable, solar and stewardship areas.

James is an arable farmer who is pursuing his goal to both improve the quality of his soils and be more precise in every input. This has led to a successful and profitable business and also industry recognition, his current position as the only farmer on DEFRA’s new ‘Nutrient Management Expert Group’ is a key example. He farms 2000ac in a family partnership with a mixture of owned, tenanted and contract farmed land and he worked alongside Yara and Yorkshire based Precision Decisions for 5 years covering all aspects of precision farming with an emphasis on nutrient management.

James is ranked in the top 5% of farmers for low growing costs and uses nearly half the average amount of diesel per ha despite having ploughing in the rotation. His passion for improving his soils has led to the re-introduction of livestock onto the farm with both sheep and cattle during the winter. These, combined with cover crops
and organic manures, have led to him being at the forefront of regenerative farming.