Speaker Bio:
Caroline Drummond is the Chief Executive of LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) and has been running the farming and environmental charity since it started in 1991. She graduated in Agriculture and has broad practical agricultural experience gained from both the UK and overseas. Her work at LEAF focuses on encouraging more sustainable farming practices and building a better public trust and understanding of farming, food and the environment – values that she is personally extremely passionate about. She is actively involved in many industry partnerships and initiatives.
In the Queen’s Birthday Honours (2009) Caroline was awarded the MBE for services to the agricultural industry and has a Doctor of Science honoris causa (Hon DSc) from Harper Adams University, a Nuffield Scholarship (2013 – 2014) on ‘Health by Stealth – What can farmers learn from science to improve the nutrition of our food’, and was recently been awarded Honorary Fellowship for the Society of the Environment (2014).
Caroline is on the council for the British Nutrition Foundation (2009 – ). She is an invited member for the Agricultural Forum (2015 – ).
She has previously been a director for the Rothamsted Research Institute (2007 – 15) and a governor for the Royal Agricultural University, a trustee for CPRE (Council for the Protection for Rural England), and a director for IGER (the Institute of Grassland and Environment Research) and the Oxford Farming Conference (2002 – 2005) and Chairman for the 2005 Oxford Farming Conference. She has sat on Defra’s Civil Society Advisory Board, Defra’s Red Tape Implementation Task Force and the Minister’s Green Food Project Steering Committee, among other industry and government initiatives.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Societies (FRAgS), a Fellow of the Institute of Agricultural Management, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Society of Biologists and Chartered Environmentalist and a director for LEAF Marque.
Caroline is married to a dairy farmer, Philip Ward and they have a young daughter, Gabrielle.
