Well, it's over and hopefully a good time was had by all attending the Farmers Weekly Awards 2008 last night.
It was quite a party for the 42 finalists in 15 sponsored categories. We had more farmers and more guests than ever with almost 1200 people in the Great Room, Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London. The overall Farmer of the Year was the outstanding winner of the Young Farmer category - beef and arable producer Adrian Ivory from Meigle in Perthshire. There were tears of joy, disappointment for some and lots of laughter.
This year's entertainment included an aerial artist- she did amazing things on a ribbon dangling from the ceiling and it made your eyes water! The high spot was an eccentric musician Rainer Hersch and his orchestra who picked Gillian Van Der Meer, John Geldard and Vic Bunby out from the crowd to conduct the music with hilarious results. The finale was suitably British with petite opera singer Annette Wardell doing a rousing rendition of Land and Hope and Glory with full belt audience participation.
Olympics commentator Clare Balding did a fabulous job as the self deprecating presenter and was widely praised for holding it all together. . RASE President John Torode and pig producer and TV star Jimmy Doherty also gave us wonderful support. Jimmy seemed a bit stunned to be awarded NFU Farming Champion of the Year for reaching millions of viewers with his popular Farming Heroes series. And John, who is proving to be an excellent ambassador for the industry, presented the overall farmer of the year prize.
The only person missing was Secretary of State HiIary Benn whose office told us on the day of the event that he could no longer make it. I thought he'd missed a big opportunity by not attending. The Awards would have given him a great snapshot of the positive work happening on farms and he could have used it to build a few bridges.
We were thrilled by the way it all went and relieved that a year's worth of planning and team effort came to a successful conclusion. The Awards are now in their fourth year and have taken on a life of their own. They started with just a few categories and sponsors and 450 guests. Someone asked me last night why we started all this four years ago. Well, where do you start?
Firstly, we believe it's vital FW does its bit to promote and celebrate farming excellence and to spread best practice. The Awards are a fun and easy way of encouraging farmers to learn from each other and share their knowledge and expertise. The winner of each category is a judge the following year and therefore you are judged by your peers.
They also enable us to offer our customers (readers, web users, advertisers, sponsors) something interactive and different. Industry suppliers use the Awards like this to align themselves with the best farmers in the UK and get their marketing messages across in a dynamic way.
The FW brand benefits enormously from the positive exposure and PR. You can't put a price on it but I believe it earns us loyalty. And finally but very improtantly for any business, we run the Awards to make money.
If you could not join us but want to see what all the fuss is about.... take a look at....
Read more about Farmers Weekly's 2008 Farmer of the Year