LJM Associates Ltd

  Last week I spent two days at the NFU Council representing the farmers from Herefordshire. If you would like to see a summary of what we talked about - check out the video here.

  Really enjoyed speaking and then discussing on the panel - potential good futures for agriculture and land managers. Great personal insights from fellow speakers. I reprised my 2026 OFC Report with specific emphasis on pivoting food businesses to thrive. You can see the video from Oxford here . 

  Great leaders don't try to do everything, they focus on what truly matters. Focus is a choice: it begins with clarity about your goals and the impact you want to create. Use a simple filter: is it important, urgent or both, or neither? protect your time for high0impact work and say not to distractions that pull you off course. Prioritisation isn't about doing more; its about doing the right things well. When your axctions align with your purpose, your energy goes further, and so does your leadership..

  Really pleased to have been involved in this webinar last week - Making Regen Herds Work: Productivity & Practice. Do check it out.

  Really pleased to have been elected as joint Vice-Chair of the East Malling Trust and looking forward to getting involved in the trust's activities.

  In business, productivity isn’t about how much time we give to a project, its about the economic and social value we create.  Yet we structure our days around desk dairies, meetings and emails, not delivering performance and output. The result is often high levels of activity for low impact. Our  highest-value work designing strategy, problem-solving, and decision-making requires peak mental focus and energy so we need to channel our time to what delivers for us and others.  At a team level, this matters even more. Back-to-back meetings and constant switching in each meeting and across a day from topic to topic often without delivering resolution drains our personal and our collective energy. We need to give ourselves time to focus and deliver output. We can batch meetings into specific windows, build mental recovery time into the day and guard our personal energy. If not we face burnout and disappointment that we have not achieved what we set out to.

Really pleased to have been elected Co-Chair of Farm Herefordshire and looking forward to finding out more about all the great work facilitation groups and farmers are doing in the county.  

  I have really enjoyed spending three days last week at a research meeting in Croatia for our REACTION project. REACTION project is a EU-funded project which aims to increase Europe’s resilience against food-related biological and chemical threats through cost-efficient threats identification tools, the development of AI-based monitoring and management tools, the increase of cooperation and awareness regarding food defence within experts and public audience. The project is composed of 13 partners, 12 from Europe and 1 from South America who are combining their diverse experiences and expertise to address the issue of food defence in a holistic and systems-based way.  Find out more here - https://www.reactionproject.eu/ and I will be giving updates as the project develops.   Want to find out more about food defence check out a summary here  

  Not all the different uses of time deliver the same outputs and impacts. value. Some activities allow you to reflect on the past, others to manage the present; more still to shape the future. Investing time means prioritising activities, tasks, and work in a way that pays off in the long term. Investing time can prioritise developing people, improving systems, and thinking strategically. These activities often feel less urgent, making them easy to postpone when fire-fighting in the day to day.  But over time, neglecting these activities creates stagnation. Investing time requires discipline and choosing long-term impact over short-term activity and delivery. The return from investing time isn’t always immediate, but it is lasting.  

We have been meeting up with county MPs to discuss the issues facing Herefordshire farmers right now. Do check out the article 

  Really pleased that our academic paper "Transforming agri-food data into actionable insights" was published in Trends in Food Science and Technology. Do check it out . 

  Taking time and making time is only the start. Protecting time is really important. Without active protection, time can quickly disappear. Meetings expand beyond the time allocated, requests creep in to your email inbox and you use your available time answering them and as a result your priorities and deadlines slip. Protecting time means setting clear boundaries, saying no when needed and defending focus as a resource, not a luxury.  Good managers don’t just plan their time; they guard it. This isn’t about being unavailable to those who need you, instead it is about being intentional in how you use your time. When you protect time for thinking, planning, and meaningful work, you increase your effectiveness and your ability to deliver.

  Our paper "The role of women in United Kingdom farm businesses" has been republished in the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.  Do check it out.