A HEREFORDSHIRE veterinary surgeon, and a leading farmer from the county, have been elected as Chairman and Vice Chairman of the prestigious Farmers Club in London.

At the Club’s historic 175th annual general meeting earlier this month, Peter Jinman OBE of Ewyas Harold and Nick Helme of Leominster were both unanimously elected.

The club’s 5,500 members represents the country’s leading farmers, landowners and farming influencers.

Mr Jinman is well known as a veterinary surgeon who graduated from London’s Royal Veterinary College and became senior partner in a Herefordshire practice, before becoming a consultant with a wide range of committee roles.

He has been President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and the British Veterinary Association, chairman of Defra’s Farm Animal Welfare Committee, non-executive director of Assured Food Standards (Red Tractor) and a lay member of the House of Commons Standards Committee. He received an OBE for services to the veterinary profession in 2004.

He runs a small-holding with his wife Gill near the Welsh border.

Commenting on his election Mr Jinman said: “Many years ago when reading Fream’s Elements of Agriculture at University little did I think I would be standing here today.

"The club has been a fantastic place for me, and I want it to be so for the next generation, and the generation after that.”

Mr Helme, who was elected Vice-Chairman for 2018, is an entrepreneurial farmer who grows 300 acres of cereals and potatoes in Herefordshire with his wife Donna.

He was founding managing director of the hugely successful 7Y machinery ring, before becoming an independent energy consultant in the UK and Europe. He is also a Nuffield Scholar.