2011 Show President is announced
Retired Bedingfield farmer Derek Scott has been appointed Honorary Show President for this year’s Suffolk Show which is held at Trinity Park on June 1 & 2.
His deputy will be the Lord Deben, the Rt Hon John Gummer.
The announcement was made at the Suffolk Agricultural Association’s AGM held today (Jan 24) and attended by more than 100 people in the Trinity Park Events Centre.
Mr Scott, whose links with the Association extend back more than 50 years, said that the invitation from the Chairman Stephen Fletcher came as “a complete surprise. I am greatly honoured to be asked. I know it is not going to be the easiest of years in this kind of economic climate, but I will be working with a good team in whom I have absolute confidence that, given the run of the weather, it will be a quality event. My wife Margo and I are greatly looking forward to it, if a little apprehensive.”
Married to Nurseryman’s daughter Margo for 54 years, the couple have a true agricultural history. In keeping with several of their contemporaries, they met at Debenham Young Farmers Club. Many people will also know Margo for her dress agency Echos which she used to run from the couple’s then home at Bedingfield Hall Farm.
While retired for about eight years, Norfolk-born Mr Scott still retains a strong interest in farming. It is, he confesses, the only job he ever wanted to do. But it is the next generation, two of his three sons, who today carry on the business.
David Scott owns Bedingfield Hall Farms Ltd while son Richard owns Lampits Farm Ltd, Thorndon and third son Robert is a creative director of a leading London advertising agency. The farming sons also run a farm contracting business called Scott Machinery Partnership. Two of the Scott’s eight grandchildren are following in their grandfather’s footsteps and studying for careers in farming.
It was his grandfather William Scott, who farmed at Scarning, who inspired Derek and on leaving school he became a student at the Chadacre Institute, as it was previously known, and worked on the staff before going to work for the late Col. Clarke at E P Clarke Farms Ltd at Bedingfield Hall.
In 1953 he became farm manager and over the years he says he was fortunate enough to acquire the shareholdings of Bedingfield Hall Farm. At that stage it comprised 500 acres of mixed arable and livestock which he and his sons expanded to 2600 acres owned and contracted.
During that time he also farmed turkeys for the Christmas trade, and kept pigs, cattle and sheep purely commercially.
Derek is fiercely proud of the agricultural industry and during the 1980s was chairman of the Deben Farmers’ Club. As a former local representative of the CLA, National Farmers’ Union (NFU) Suffolk branch chairman of the pigs committee and sugar beet committee as well as a national delegate for the poultry industry, he
said:” I am proud of it and its people because of their tremendous loyalty and straightforwardness. Of course there are ups and downs but it is a solid industry. The Show is a great part of it and if you are a countryman what else could you be doing?”
His first involvement with the Show was in his early twenties when the Show Director Edward Taylor asked him to steward. After cutting his teeth on the car parks, the training ground for most stewards, he became senior steward of FarmInAnglia, the region’s showcase stand, was twice appointed deputy Show Director, initially for Norman Simper and then John Thurlow, before becoming Show Director from 1991 – 1993.
“The Show is our real showcase,” he said, adding that his favourite part is seeing the livestock and horses in the grand parade at the end of both days activity. “It really sums the Show up and watching the public crowd around the ring for this event, it seems that they agree with me.”
Mr Scott’s chosen charity for the year is the East Anglian Air Ambulance.
Former rugby player Derek and his wife are still actively involved with sport. They both play tennis and have only just hung up their ski boots after many years on the slopes. Derek still enjoys taking his dog to pick up on the family’s and neighbouring shoots.