Graduated from Queens University Belfast with a BSc Honours Degree in Economics and an MSc in Agricultural Economics and management.  Worked for one year as an Agricultural Manager with poultry company Moy Park before joining the Ulster Farmers Union in 1995 as a policy Officer with responsibility for arable and horticultural issues. Later worked as the Unions’ Milk Policy Officer before becoming Communications manager in 2002.

 

 

Ms McCormack has been involved in the Agriculture industry for 35 years.

Being a farmer in her own right, she sits on the Lakeland Dairies Producer Committee representing the Mid Ulster area. Mary also has been involved in community work for 23 years and facilitates farmers groups through different projects. She provides a form filling service for farmers approved by DARD and is a part time trainer with Greenmount Agricultural College delivering courses locally throughout Tyrone.

Ms  McCormack is project co-ordinator of the Farming Families Bureau in Magherafelt which provided a one stop support service for farm families.

 

 

John farms in partnership with his son Jason on the Ards Peninsula Co. Down. They have a herd of around 220 cows plus followers using a spring calving grass based low cost system.

 

John is a main board director of NFU mutual insurance society based in Stratford upon Avon. He is a Governor of North Down and Ards further Education College and a trustee of the Agricultural research institute for NI. John leads the employer’s side of the Agricultural Wages Board. During the last 30 years he has taken an active interest in the UFU having chaired many groups and committees until becoming an office bearer and President in 1995/1996. He is currently a director of Farm Family Development and deputy chair of Rural Support. A member of Newtownards Rotary club and plays golf rarely in both senses of the word.

 

He is married to Shelia and has two children Jason and Jennifer.

   

Robert Agnew grew up on a small farm on the slopes of the Mourne Mountains near Annalong.  He has been involved in most aspects of agricultural production and marketing all this life – enterprises on his father’s farm included sheep, pigs, poultry and suckler cows with progeny marketed as beef.  There is now a sizeable dairy herd run by his sons. 

 

He has been active in a wide range of committee activities including Ulster Grassland Society and a UFU group monitoring the Designation of the Mourne Area as a National Park.