On the road

Cereals: Meet the Red Tractor Chairman

Royal Three Counties Show and Highland Show: Meet your Red Tractor Dairy Sector Chair and the Red Tractor Chair

Pigs Tomorrow: The team presented on flexible farrowing

FSA collaboration: Demonstrating Red Tractor assessments to government regulators

Events coming up:

Cereals 2025: Heath Farm, Leadenham, Lincolnshire

Alistair Mackintosh will be on the Red Tractor stand at Cereals 2025 on 11 June, ready to meet members to discuss the latest developments from Red Tractor.

Crops Technical Manager Annie Rogers and the Red Tractor team will also be on hand throughout both days of the event (11–12 June) to answer questions and listen to feedback from members.

Alistair is taking part in the Farmers Weekly Question Time at the opening event on the Seed to Shelf Mainstage at 9am on day one.
We’re also part of the BASIS Knowledge Trail, so visit our stand to learn something new and earn a CPD point.
Come and see us at the Red Tractor stand, number 236, close to the NFU and British Sugar, we look forward to welcoming you.

Not got your ticket for Cereals yet?

Good news, we’ve got a limited number of free tickets available! If you’re planning to attend, get in touch with us soon at memberhelp@redtractor.org.uk to claim one.

Royal Three Counties Show

Tim Lock, Chair of the Red Tractor Dairy Sector Board, will participate in a panel discussion in the Future of Farming Theatre during the Royal Three Counties Show. The session on Saturday 14th June at 2:30pm will focus on collaborative strategies within the agricultural supply chain to enhance sustainability across the industry.

Highland Show

Red Tractor Chair Alistair Mckintosh and Philippa Wiltshire, Director of Operations will be attending the Highland Show to meet with key Scottish farming and food stakeholders. They are keen to hear directly from farmers and will be spending time on the NFU Scotland stand during the day.

Earlier this month:

Balmoral Show

Philippa Wiltshire, Red Tractor’s Director of Operations spent time with key Northern Ireland farming and food stakeholders at last months Balmoral Show. Topics discussed focussed in particular on Red Tractor progress in responding to the Farm Assurance Review and ways in which the portal could work better for NI dairy processors and their farm suppliers.

Building understanding with the Food Standards Agency

Last month Red Tractor hosted an on-farm engagement day with members of the Food Standards Agency Regulatory Standards & Industry Assurance team. 

The session focused on several key areas that are important to Red Tractor members including the wider role of assurance within the space of governmental earned recognition, the governance structure of Red Tractor and in turn how standards are developed.

Staff members demonstrated how the Red Tractor portal can be used by members to share documentation with the assessor prior to the day of assessment along with answering questions on all things assurance process.

As we were on-farm we took the opportunity to show a worked assessment process which included a discussion around what determines the level of non-conformances that may be raised during an assessment and how the certification process works. Thanks must go to the farm team at Myerscough College who shared their protocols and records to allow the demonstration of assessing to be very realistic.

Farm Assurance Review recommendation 1.9: Transparency between schemes and regulators states – schemes should inform and train industry regulators about the purpose and scope of good practice farm assurance, and the respective roles of farm assurance versus regulatory requirements.

Red Tractor at Pigs Tomorrow

Georgina McDowell, Red Tractor Technical Manager (Pigs) and Carol Flint, Technical Manager (Pigs), joined Pigs Sector Board Chair, Stewart Houston at this year’s Pigs Tomorrow event, which welcomed industry representatives and producers from across the sector.

They enjoyed meeting members and business owners to introduce our Pigs Consultation. The pigs consultation is open until Friday and is seeking views from all stakeholders in the UK pig supply chain on industry proposals to change Red Tractor pig standards. Find out more here.