A HEREFORD woman has become the first female recipient of a scholarship enabling her to start a degree course.

Sarah Wells, a business support manager at Countrywide Farmers, will benefit from the Agri-farm scholarship by spending the next two years studying for an MBA (Master of Business Administration) at Cranfield School of Management in Bedfordshire.

"Having been brought up on a large estate in Herefordshire (Lower Hope, near Ullingswick), where my father was estate manager I always knew that I wanted a career in agriculture," she said.

"The Cranfield MBA provides an excellent grounding in all the essential subjects from marketing and business strategies to finance and logistics.

"I am delighted to be the first Agri-farm scholar and as ever, I am keen to demonstrate that, in agriculture, women do just as well as men.

"What is perhaps more interesting, from my contact with other students, is how surprised they are by just how sophisticated and well developed agriculture needs to be, and has become."

She was selected by John Beckett who set-up the charitable foundation scholarship on his retirement as chairman of Genus, a business selling products to cattle and pig farmers.