Council
Our Trustees are:
Annabel Allott
After a successful career in food and drink marketing, Annabel devoted a lot of time to local campaigns to raise the standard of school meals. Two years ago she was approached by Twin Trading, the Fairtrade company behind Cafedirect coffee and Divine chocolate to join their New Sector Development group, which adds value to Fairtrade products through innovation and professional marketing. Her knowledge of how both the big food and drink companies and the big supermarket groups operate, and especially of the tactics they use to try to influence consumers, has been key to this role.
Huw Bowles
Huw Bowles is the Chief Operating Officer of OMSCo, the UK’s largest organic milk co-operative collecting and marketing milk from around 500 organic dairy farms. This represents around 70% of the UK supply. Prior to OMSCo, Huw studied Agriculture at Reading University and following his degree, Huw spent six months milking cows in the Waikato, New Zealand before returning to the UK to train as a chartered accountant. After qualifying he worked as a management consultant with KPMG. Huw is Chair of the Organic Trade Board and through this position is a Soil Association Council member. The Organic Trade Board seeks to work with the Soil Association and other organic bodies to develop the organic market.
Neil Canetty-Clarke (Hon. Treasurer)
Neil is the co-founder of www.schoolstrader.com the free community trading website. He is a graduate of Edinburgh University and has worked in financial roles for Morgan Grenfell, LWT, Guardian Media Group, iTouch, Granada and ITV. In 2006, he attended the AMP at Harvard Business School. Neil is a Non-Executive Director of an AIM listed marketing communications plc. He is married with three children and lives on a small farm in East Sussex. He and his wife have been producer members of the Soil Association since 1999 - their arable/grass farm became fully organic in 2000 - and they currently have a small flock of Romney sheep and produce haylage.
Gaye Donaldson
Gaye has been involved with the organic movement since 1985, when she began working for The Organic Growers Association and British Organic Farmers. She was Public Affairs Director of the Soil Association in the 1990s, leaving to set up an award-winning organic herb farm and business. Gaye is a past Council member and chaired the Processors Standards Committee as well as setting up the Health Products Standards Committee. Gaye now works as a systemic consultant and therapist - a systemic view of life ensures that every element of a system is valued and respected and this of course includes eco-systems, farming systems and organisational systems.
Renée Elliott
Renée founded Planet Organic, which is the UK's largest independent organic retailer and now has three stores in central London. She has worked in the organic industry since 1991 and has served on council since 1999. She has also served on the standards board and currently sits on the multiple retailers working group. Renée sits on the Government's Organic Action Plan committee and is an advisor on organic issues to a major US fund.
Martin Fitton
Martin's extensive career has covered rural policy development, rural recreation and sustainability. He was Social Research Adviser to the Countryside Commission, Director of the Countryside Commission in Wales and Chief Executive of the Brecon Beacons National Park and the Association of National Park Authorities. He has been instrumental in a range of projects to encourage more sustainable use of common land, local food processing, rural regeneration and community participation, including pioneering Welsh food festivals and establishing Coed Cymru, the Welsh woodland initiative.
Graham Harvey
As a freelance writer on food and farming, Graham has campaigned for organic or ecological agriculture most of his working life. Following a spell at Farmers Weekly, his campaigning began in the early 1980s with a feature on the perils of growth hormones in cattle. He was the first UK journalist to write (in Farming News) of the dangers of using the growth hormone BST on dairy cows. For a number of years he wrote the Old Muckspreader column in Private Eye, and later wrote his first book, The Killing of the Countryside. As a freelance writer he has worked on The Archers for 25 years, first as a scriptwriter and more recently as Agricultural Story Editor. In 2010 he joined with science writer Colin Tudge to put on an alternative Oxford farming conference under the motto: Good food for everyone forever.
Phil Haughton
Phil first became a member of the Soil Association at 14 years old - the beginning of a life long involvement in organic food and farming. Experience has come from five years farming in Scotland, five years working on a city farm with education at its heart and 25 years retailing, wholesaling, growing and delivering organic food with a commitment to sustainability and community throughout. The award winning Better Food Company started life in 1992 and is a pioneering and successful organic food business with operations covering retail, a box scheme and wholesale. The company grows vegetables and fruit on 22 acres near Bristol and Phil is currently playing a leading role in setting up a large CSA near Bristol.
Graham Keating (Vice Chair)
Graham is the Director of Communications for Yeo Valley, a Somerset-based, family-owned farming and dairy business. Best known for its Yeo Valley Organic brand, the company now employs over 1,000 people. Graham spent twelve years at Northern Foods, and joined Yeo Valley as Managing Director of the then separate Yeo Valley Organic Company Ltd in 1999. Graham was voted as Organic Business Personality of the Year 2002 in the annual Soil Association awards. Following a business reorganisation in 2004 he took on a new role for the larger Yeo Valley group, directing internal and external communications for the business and he now chairs Organic South West Food & Drink, working closely with the Regional Development Agency.
Dr David Main
David is a veterinary surgeon and Reader in Animal Welfare at the University of Bristol Veterinary School. He is a member of the Farm Animal Welfare Committee (formerly Council). He has research interests in welfare assessment, intervention strategies to improve welfare and animal welfare education. David has had a longrunning interest in organic livestock that started with an undergraduate project that evaluated a herbal wormer. He has a long-standing relationship with the Soil Association including a period on the standards committee (1997-99), supervising a veterinary resident working with SACL (2005-08), and now as project co-ordinator of a joint project, AssureWel. This project, which is also a collaboration with RSPCA, aims to embed welfare outcomes into the assurance process. He believes that the veterinary profession should advocate organic principles to all their clients and has endeavoured to increase organic-related teaching in the veterinary course at Bristol. David also has a wider interest in food sustainability issues and is a member of the Food Ethics Council.
John McCormick
John has been a self-employed organic market gardener since 1991, running a box scheme for the greater Belfast area. Previously, John worked as a farm manager at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and as a gardener with the Camphill Communities of Ireland. He is the director and current chairman of the Organic Centre in Leitrim, Republic of Ireland and grower representative on the Northern Ireland Organic Action Plan Group. John is the devolved nations' member for Northern Ireland.
Orna NiChionna (Chair)
Orna joined the Soil Association in 1990, and became more involved when she bought a small organic farm in 2001. Having had a 20 year career in business consulting, she started advising Council members on how to deal more effectively with the business community, and was co-opted to Council in 2002. In 2004, she became vice chair; she also served as chair of Soil Association Certification Limited in 2005 and 2006. She is a non-executive director of a number of public and private companies and is the current chair of the Council (2007).
Tim O'Riordan
Tim is an Emeritus Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia with a long research record on the politics of environmentalism and sustainability, culminating in 11 edited books and numerous refereed articles. He pioneered an interdisciplinary study of the transition to organic production on the Duchy of Cornwall Home Farm at Tetbury and is science commissioner for the UK Sustainable Development Commission. He works closely with the regions and local authorities in bringing sustainable development to a devolved level.
Dennis Overton
Dennis is the devolved nations' member for Scotland. He has recently taken responsibility for the family croft in the north Highlands, and is currently building a partnership with 200 small farmers in Rwanda, developing a European market for organic geranium oil. In the late 1990s, Dennis helped pioneer organic salmon farming, and since the early 1990s has been managing director of Aquascot, a Ross-shire sustainable seafood business. Dennis is also involved in working to improve the Highlands' poorest performing secondary school which includes growing organic food with the pupils, and in the development of Scotland Food and Drink, the private-public partnership.
Dr Gabriel Scally
Gabriel has been a long-time supporter of the Soil Association, helping where he can to support its work in the world of public health. He acted as a referee for the Food for Life Partnership lottery bid and has worked closely with the Food for Life team over the last five years to support the success of this great programme in schools and communities. He is a public health physician working in the NHS and has been Regional Director of Public Health for the South West of England since the 1990s.
Geetie Singh MBE
Geetie was founder and Managing Director of The Duke of Cambridge organic gastropub in north London, the only one to earn Soil Association certification. She grew up in a commune in Worcestershire, which gave her a solid grounding in organic issues. Geetie later worked in the restaurant trade and opened the pub in 1998 with the view to running a business that was ethical as well as profitable, serving organic food and upholding the highest sustainable business practices.
Charles Weston
Charles worked in the agricultural merchanting trade for a number of years, ending up with his own company. This progressed into a major transport, distribution and warehousing business based in the West Country. He has always farmed livestock in addition to his commercial activities and for the past eight years has been a full time working farmer. Since 2003 Charles has been a member of the Soil Association Producer Board, seeking to represent the interests of upland livestock producers. He took over as Chair of the Producer Board in 2004 and has been a member of the Soil Association Standards Board since 2005.
Nigel Woodhouse
Nigel has run a trout farm in Cumbria for the past 25 years, which was amongst the first to become organic. He has been instrumental in developing organic standards for fish and is chair of the aquaculture standards committee. Nigel has a background in teaching, some of it in the developing world.
The current Management Committee:
Orna NiChionna - Chair
Graham Keating - Vice Chair
Neil Canetty-Clarke - Hon. Treasurer
Dennis Overton - Elected by Council
Charles Weston - Elected by Council