Farming feature: David Nunn, the Suffolk Show man

David Nunn, Suffolk show director, is pictured at his farm in Stowupland.

There was a sense of optimism in the air on day one, and the inevitable buzz created by two big national events - the 2012 London Olympics and the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations.

David Nunn, Suffolk show director, is pictured at his farm in Stowupland.

But destiny occasionally plays tricks on us all, and no one had crystal-balled the weather.

High winds slapped down the sense of optimism and put us all back in our places. The unthinkable happened: day two of the Suffolk Show was cancelled, creating misery, and opening up a potential half million pound black hole in organisers the Suffolk Agricultural Association’s finances to boot.

At the centre of the drama was honorary show director David Nunn.

It was his second year in post, and the unenviable job of halting the show fell to him.

He knew it was the right thing to do - high winds are among the few factors which can bring an event like the Suffolk Show, much of which is housed in temporary marquees, to a shuddering halt. Public safety has to be the paramount concern.

Afterwards, when many of the tradestand holders refused a proffered partial refund, David said he found their generosity “humbling”.

David is modest about his own contribution to the much-loved county event, and says its strength lies in the commitment of the army of volunteers who keep it going. His own role, he maintains, is to let them get on with what they do best.

“It’s all about keeping everybody happy. It’s all I have to do. It’s my only job. It isn’t hard. I think the strength of the show is I’m only the chairman of a very strong committee of people who understand their areas. The senior steward of the light horses knows what he’s doing, the heavy horses knows what he’s doing.

“I leave them very much to do their own thing. They are all as passionate about the Suffolk Show as I am. There are very few times I have to come in and say: ‘I don’t agree with this.’”

David is a farmer by trade, and very much rooted in Suffolk’s tight-knit agricultural community.

The family runs a large operation, farming both its own land and land under contract, stretching from Stowupland, near Stowmarket, northwards up the A140 to Mendlesham. In all, the Nunns farm about 2,000 acres, about half of which is family-owned.

David’s son, James, 32, looks after the day-to-day running of the farm while his father busies himself with the business of running the show. It’s an arrangement which suits them both.

“If I did not have a voluntary job I would be breathing down his neck the whole time and for us as a family it works,” explains David. “At the busy time, at harvest, I’m here, and the rest of the year I can go off to Suffolk Agricultural Association and do things there. It gives him the opportunity to put his mark on the farm.

“If you have not done it before you’re 40, you are not going to do it. That’s when I had the most drive on the farm. I think that’s when you have the most energy.”

David has always been a busy man, and has readily engaged in voluntary activity as well as being a hands-on farmer. His attitude to life is: “It goes by very quickly and it’s what you put into it.”

His is a full-on schedule, including commitments on behalf of Suffolk Agricultural Association which take him far and wide.

Show directors are voted in to work on three shows, and David has now passed his mid-way point. Bill Baker, his deputy, will, like David, put his own stamp on the show when he takes over next year.

“I have had two shows now, one very good, one not quite so good, and I have one more to do and I think it’s a strength because everyone comes in and puts their stamp on what they want to do,” he says.

His innovations include moving the cattle to make them more accessible to the public.

“In all our surveys what the public loved going to the show for was the livestock and what was going on in the cattle ring. People like to see it. It’s their only opportunity to see these marvellous animals,” he explains.

He was also involved in creating Eat Street, a showcase for the food and drink of the region.

“I wanted to develop Eat Street. I always had a thing about the standard of food over the years has improved but I’m never that keen on eating out of burger vans and I thought we had a lot more to offer so we developed Eat Street which I think has been very successful,” he says.

“I can do what I like within reason. I have to answer to the board and the chairman and my committee has to agree with me.

“We are given a fairly free run as directors to put our mark on a show but I think that’s a strength because I don’t think you could do it for more than three years. I think you have to keep changing people because we all have different ideas. Other shows have had people in position for much longer, but you must run out of enthusiasm and ideas. It takes the best part of five months of my year which I do for nothing.

“I don’t think many people could run that level of enthusiasm for more than three year and run their own jobs.”

This year, David faces his biggest challenge. He must now re-boot the show following last year’s weather catastrophe.

“It makes it slightly more difficult I feel because in previous years we have built on a level of success. We have had some very good shows and we have almost got to work much harder to build up because when people left last year, it won’t have been a great experience,” he says.

“I think it’s going to be even more necessary to build a better show.

“I believe still got a very exciting story to tell about sport. We have got a very good story to tell with the sports village.”

The fascination for him is in watching the story of the show develop over the course of the year.

“For me it’s exciting. I actually enjoy the building of the show,” he says.

“If I’m really busy on the two days of the show, I have got it wrong. In a normal year I probably eat too much and drink too much and talk too much.”

When he announced the show closure last year, he says there were some who came to him and said: “What are you talking about? There is no wind.” But when the Met Office predicted gale conditions, there really was no choice, he explained.

“We know a dustbin lid at 30mph will kill a child. Wind will always be the factor that would close the show. We are on a very free-draining site and it would take a tremendous amount of rain to stop the show.

“It’s the one thing we had hoped would never happen. It’s the one thing that did happen,” he says.

“Once you have the facts it’s not a decision you want to make but it’s a decision that’s easy to make when you know how bad it’s going to be. It wasn’t popular, but it was right.”

David, 58, is the fourth generation of his family to run Poplar Farm, the focal point of the Nunns’ farming operation.

His wife of 35 years, Karen, is the “backbone” of the operation, he says. “We are very lucky. We are best friends. It sounds silly. She will always say she doesn’t have a job but actually a farmer’s wife is the backbone.

“I’m the face you see and she’s the one keeping me going. We work very well as a team,” he says.

“The only livestock we have on the farm is 35 horses on a livery yard at Mendlesham High House Riding Centre which my daughter, Lisa, 33, built up and used to manage. She’s got married to a farmer in Manningtree and she’s moved down there and now runs a very successful shop called Out and About Country Clothing.

“I have got another daughter, Annabelle, 27, she’s a personal trainer and has just qualified in sports massage. She’s very busy. She’s a very hard working little girl. She works seven days a week. She’s always been interested in the sports side.”

The farm grows predominantly wheat, sugar beet and oilseed rape. The family can trace its roots at the farm back to David’s great grandfather, Harry Nunn, who arrived there from Finborough in the mid-1930s. Robert, his son, took over and he had two sons who ran the farm, one of whom was David’s father, Ronald. Ronald’s brother died, leaving David, his father, and David’s cousin running the operation. When David joined the business in 1974, they had around 500 acres, but have gradually built up the farm from there.

“In 1982, my cousin decided he didn’t want to farm any more which gave me the opportunity to buy out the whole farm. We had probably gone up a bit then to about 700 acres. We are now farming about 1,000 acres of our own and we contract farm about 1,000 acres for other people,” says David.

The family owns land around Stowupland, Mendlesham, and Stonham, and contract farms at Stowupland, Crowfield, Pettaugh and Winston.

“In 1974 we would have a lot of pigs, we have had obviously arable farming and we would have been growing a lot of vegetables - potatoes and a lot of hand picked vegetables. We would start the year with aobut 40 acres of hand picked peas then dwarf beans then 40 acres of hand picked runner beans and about 40/50 acres of potatoes.

“It was labour-intensive. We would quite regularly have about 100 people on the farm casual labour doing hand picked work. The hand picked staff literally dried up. The peas left when the pea viners came in so I guess by early 80s that was all gone. and we kept pigs right up until 1988. I don’t like pigs very much and I like them even less when they lose money,” he says. “But I tended pigs in the early time because having bought the whole farm out I had to have the pigs to make money. In the 80s, contract farming became more fashionable and there were a lot more opportunities to farm for other people.”

In the 1990s the farm went through seven or eight “difficult” years but recovered.

“The thing about farming is we are in it for the long haul. We can weather some years of relatively bad prices. Prices have now improved.”

Today, more than ever, agriculture is dominated by world markets, and events over the other side of the world can have a major impact on prices.

“I don’t believe we can feed a population of nine billion unless there are some major changes in agricultural husbandry and there will be,” he says.

“Good husbandry just alone won’t take up that slack. We will not increase our food production enough.”

The farm has state-of-the art machinery, and has embraced what modern technology has to offer. It also has about 58 acres in environmental schemes, including grass margins, and 12 miles of access tracks for people to walk and ride horses along.

In his younger days, David did his share of globe-trotting, and spent time in Canada, working for a Danish firm. He spent some happy months with the International Agricultural Exchange Association, and ended up, in 1989, as its vice president, and travelling the world working with young people.

David still does the office work, but his son, James, who studied at Cirencester, has gradually taken over the running of the farm.

“I’m just here to bounce things off if he wants to,” says David.

“I’m very lucky at the moment. I have a lovely family who are all happy. It’s something to be pleased with. They are all great and we are all good friends. But we always have been.

“My father was one of my best friends and we worked very well together and my father had the same relationship with James. I think the strength of this business is we are very close and we work to the same end really. We are very lucky. It all works.”

David doesn’t envisage any problems adjusting to life as a past show director.

“The 1st of June that’s it - I’m gone,” he says.

“Farmers don’t retire, they die. They just set back slowly. Many people ask me: ‘When did you take over from your father?’ and I haven’t got a clue,

“My heart is still in my farm. This is what I get up every morning to do. This is my first love, my farm and my family, and it will always be centred around this.”

The Suffolk Show 2013 takes place on May 29 and 30.