Farmers Guardian – 7th March 2025

To mark IWD 2025 (March 7), we speak to Christine Tacon, who has sat on various boards such as Red Tractor, about her defining moments and advice for other women in agriculture

Christine Tacon is a well-known figure in the farming world, and although she is not directly from a farming background, she has worked her way up through various businesses and has had a seat at the table on various boards. The Met Office, Red Tractor, MDS and now the Co-op, to name a few.

She says: “My grandparents lived locally to Norwich, where I grew up, on a tenanted farm where my uncle farmed 20 dairy cows. My mother was in the Women’s Land Army, studied agriculture at Sutton Bonnington and Writtle and then worked with the National Advisory Service in dairying, but had to give up her career when she married, as was customary in civil service jobs in those days.

“I am, like many people, only a few generations away from farming.”

Her original career in engineering and marketing had nothing to do with farming until she became marketing director at Anchor Foods, where the butter and cheese were all sourced from New Zealand. 

Here she began to understand about dairy farming.

“I tried to identify points of difference for what is essentially a commodity product. I introduced free range butter as a concept, which of course is no longer used as Anchor is part of Arla Foods” she says.

Her first ‘proper job’ in farming was when she became CEO of Co-op Farms.

Christine spent 11 years at Co-op, and she began to really focus on the supply chain. 

“We had to get out of some areas of farming to get the business back into profit, and then vertically integrate the supply chain so that we grew, packed and supplied fresh produce and other goods to retailers. Food for the Co-op was branded ‘Grown by Us’ and included nearly all their UK sourced potatoes, onions, strawberries, broccoli and frozen peas along with many other food products such as flour, honey and apple juice. We ran education and wildlife projects on farm and engaged well with the public and Co-op members,” she says.

When she left the Co-op, she began sitting on boards almost all related to food and farming. 

Groceries Code Adjudicator 

These included the RPA, AF Group, NERC, Met Office, Red Tractor, MDS and now the Co-op. She was also the Groceries Code Adjudicator regulating how retailers treated their suppliers against a statutory code for seven years.

“Not many people realised that was only three days a week, which is why I had other roles alongside it,” she says.

So, after years of working in the sector, what would she say her defining moment is?

“I joined Co-op Farms in September 2000, and I spent the next few months putting together a strategy for how we were going to work together, centralise key functions and exit some activities in order to get us back into profit,” she says.

Foot-and-mouth

“This was going to be a big cultural change and needed a good sell-in and explanation to all employees. I was preparing to launch the strategy at the annual conference when the whole business came together each year in February. At the time the business was run from about 30 locations, including 13 dairy farms, from north to south and there were about 140 employees. And then foot-and-mouth disease struck. I asked the NFU for guidance on hygiene procedures to bring so many people together and Sir Ben Gill said to me: ‘However careful you are, and even if you do nothing wrong, if foot-and-mouth appears in a new area where you farm after your conference, you will be held accountable for spreading it.’

“I realised that the risk was too great and cancelled the conference.

“Instead, I produced a video which I recorded in my garden and sent to all employees. I then went round all the farms personally (meeting off-site for the dairy farms) to explain what we were doing and taking questions. It was a time commitment but meant that everyone got to understand where we were going and question me personally. Retrospectively I now recognise that way of selling in such immense change was infinitely preferable, more personal and safer. But at the time, cancelling the conference felt like a catastrophe.”

She has certainly seen some major changes in farming, particularly policy and the changes made to organisations like Red Tractor.

Farming, by its nature, is challenging and constantly changing, but it was during her groceries code adjudicator role that presented her with her biggest challenge.

She says: “I was the first person in the role, had no team and no guidelines of how to do the job. It also took the Government 18 months to give me the ability to fine a retailer. I thought it would be an unpopular role with suppliers complaining I was not doing enough and retailers pushing back, not changing their ways and finding ways around the code. I thought I and my newly recruited team of five would all need tin-hats.

“In fact, my first day in the role created enormous media interest and I realised that they were going to be my biggest allies. The media played a critical role in telling suppliers what I was doing and what I needed to hear about, and also retailers did not want to be reported in the press for doing badly in the survey or being on the receiving end of criticism from the adjudicator.”

She feels she encouraged a culture change within retailers to realise that the code was a responsible way of doing business, which created better relationships and meant they could collaborate to find solutions.

Advice

With years of experience under her belt, looking back, what would she tell her younger self?

“You do not have to solve all the issues on your own, allow yourself to be vulnerable and ask people for help – it will surprise you how many are there for you,” she says.

“For those starting out in the industry, I would say the same, but I would add that diversity is also about getting diversity of thought – do not be like others, be yourself because your difference adds to the whole.”

 

 

 

 

Emily Ashworth