New NIAB Board Chairman

3 Oct 2016

Jim Godfrey succeeded Jeremy Lewis as Chairman of the NIAB BoardJim Godfrey, NIAB Board Chairman at the AGM on 15 September 2016.

Jim is a director of RJ & AE Godfrey, a family farming business in North Lincolnshire with 4,000 ha of arable crops and a successful indoor pig unit with 6,500 sows, producing 165,000 pigs each year for customers including Morrison’s.

A specialist in leading strategic change and corporate governance he is also chairman of Innovate UK’s Sustainable Agriculture and Food Innovation Platform and of the Board of Trustees of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI. He is a member of the UK Agri-Tech Strategy’s Leadership Council, chairman of the Commercial Farmers Group, an RASE honorary vice-president, a director of the Lincolnshire Rural Support Network, and a faculty member of the International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Board Training Programme.

Former board and committee positions include chair of The Potato Marketing Board, Scottish Crop Research Institute, Sentry Farming Group plc, the International Potato Centre and the Alliance of the 15 Research Centres of the CGIAR, a council member of the Biological and Bio-Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and a member of the Nuffield Farming Scholarship Selection Panel.

Jim was awarded the OBE for services to agricultural research in Scotland in 2002.