Scaling the heights for FARM-Africa
A team of bosses from food businesses are about to embark on a huge challenge in aid of FARM-Africa, as Mary-Vere Parr discovers
Scaling heights seems to be something that Richard Macdonald, former director-general of the National Farmers Union, takes in his stride.
Having started at the NFU as a tea-boy in the 1970s, he worked his way through the ranks to become DG in 1996. Then, for 13 years, he led the organisation over peaks and troughs – most notably through the crises of BSE in 1996 and foot-and-mouth in 2001.
Richard has described the “living nightmare” of when news of BSE first broke. “We genuinely thought it was the end of the British beef industry,” he recalls.
But being part of the NFU delegation that persuaded the government to set up the Over-Thirty-Months-Scheme for cattle was a high point which, in his view, saved the industry.
More controversially, he faced the “astonishingly difficult” decision not to vaccinate livestock against a second outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 2007 (while fielding calls from Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s director of communications and strategy, pressing for a quick fix to allow the government to call an election).
But having left the NFU in 2009 “in good heart”, Richard – now a non-executive director of Moy Park and Dairy Crest and working on a new business investing in farmland in Tanzania – says he has time to set himself some new challenges. This time he is literally giving himself a mountain to climb, but not just any old mountain – the peak in question is Africa’s highest mountain, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
Richard explains the personal significance of the challenge. “I was born on the southern slopes on Mount Kilimanjaro,” he says. “My family are farmers there and East Africa is close to my heart. As a trustee of the charity FARM-Africa, I’ve been out to see some of the projects in Tanzania and have been bowled over by them, so nine months ago I had this eureka moment. I phoned a few people in the food industry and asked ‘If I climb Kilimanjaro for FARM-Africa, will you?’ To my amazement, they said yes.”
Nine months on and the in-the-bath moment has developed into the fully-fledged UK Food PLC Kilimanjaro Challenge expedition, with a team of 10 and a long list of sponsors from the UK food industry.
Joining Richard on the trek are: Mark Carr, group CEO, AB Sugar; Mike Coupe, group commercial director, J Sainsbury plc; Andrew Cracknell, director, Anglo Beef Processors; Nigel Dunlop, CEO, Moy Park; Iain Ferguson, director, Greggs; Julian Marks, managing director, Barfoots of Botley; Charles Reed, group managing director, William Reed Business Media; Tim Smith, chief executive, Food Standards Agency; Martin Wilks, managing director, Dairy Crest.
To date, £150,000 has been pledged to FARM-Africa projects developing small-scale farm businesses in eastern Africa.
Getting the project off the ground has been hard enough work, but what about the challenge itself? Mount Kilimanjaro is the tallest freestanding mountain on earth. Its summit lies 5,895m (19,340ft) above the plains, and the team face a gruelling ascent over a variety of terrains in unpredictable and erratic weather. The final 11- to 15-hour ascent, begun by torchlight at 1am and passing through volcanic scree to the crater rim, is made all the more strenuous by the effects of altitude and extreme cold. No mean feat for a team whose average age hovers in the late 40s.
Not surprisingly, the team has been busy getting fit. Richard, no stranger to endurance events such as cycling from London to Paris, has completed a 55-mile walk and a 93-mile Reading to Bristol cycle ride, as well as taking up boxing with a vengeance.
There’s a degree of friendly competition among the team, but they share the same aim. “I’m just looking forward to putting the Blackberry down and climbing the mountain,” says Richard. “Reaching the summit and raising this amount of money will give us all a huge sense of fulfilment.”
The team leave for Nairobi on 22 September, setting off on the trek from the village of Nale Moru on 24 September with a view to reaching the crater rim at Gillman’s Point and Uhuru Peak on 30 September.
* Follow their progress on www.kiliclimb-farmafrica.org.uk To sponsor the team, contact Ngaio Bowthorpe at FARM-Africa on 020 7067 1252, email kiliclimb@farmafrica.org.uk or donate online at www.virginmoneygiving.com/foodforafrica
FARM-Africa
Founded in 1985 by Sir Michael Wood and David Campbell, who believed that “food is the best medicine”, FARM-Africa started work with nomadic pastoralists in the north of Kenya in 1987, giving goats on credit to poor widows (one of their goat’s kids was returned to FARM-Africa and redistributed to another family). Similar grass-roots projects developing small-scale agriculture followed elsewhere in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda, Southern Sudan and Ethiopia. In 2010 the charity worked directly with 649,000 people and improved the lives of around 7.6 million people in Eastern Africa.