End of an era

It is with heavy heart that I announce (if you haven’t read already) that Jim Begg, Dairy UK executive director and more importantly, member of Dairy Industries International’s editorial board, is retiring this year. As he said to much laughter at the Dairy UK dinner the other night, Jim knew it was time to step down when he was having a heated discussion with the grandson of a farmer he had debates with years before. He has to leave before the great-grandson shows up.

I suppose it is best to get out while you are on a high, and Jim has certainly been on one over the last year – reaching the voluntary agreement for processors and farmers last summer, and then actually seeing CAP reform this year. British dairy has gone through enormous highs and lows in the past 43 years while he’s been in the business. And he has been in the thick of it. Today, we have a Dairy Roadmap and many more tools for getting the British dairy industry through the rest of the turbulent decade, and this is in no small part due to his tireless efforts.

I will miss his blogs and seeing his genial facade at dairy meetings both domestic and international. I will also miss his occasional finger-wagging at me when he had a point to make about where I was wrong on one of my editorials. I was also always cheered by the awkward questions he would put to whatever presenter was up on the podium at conferences. He knew what makes great copy.

So we wish him the best of luck in his new career as retiree and hope that the fishing is a suitable substitute for wrangling with farmers and Eurocrats. The British dairy industry will be a less colourful place without him.