Executive Committee
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Guy Beaufoy
Guy Beaufoy works as a consultant on agricultural and environmental policies in Europe, specialising in the Mediterranean region. His interest in rural-environmental issues in this region began when living in northern Portugal in the 1980s, which was followed by an MSc in Rural Resources and Environmental Policy at Wye College (London University). Guy has worked for 15 years in Spain through the association IDRiSi, and manages a small farm in Extremadura producing organic olive oil and figs. This has brought him into direct contact with the local farming community, as well as experiencing the complexities of the CAP from the receiving end. He has been closely involved in the development of the High Nature Value farming concept since its inception in the early 1990s, and has worked on this issue in Spain, Turkey, Bulgaria and Rumania, as well as at the European level. Currently he represents the Forum on the CAP Advisory Groups for Olives and for Fruit and Vegetables.
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Jean-Pierre Biber
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Eric Bignal
Director
Dr Eric Bignal worked for over 20 years as a wildlife biologist with the UK Nature Conservancy Council - latterly as their Senior Agricultural Ecologist. He holds a PhD in Terrestrial Ecology from the University of Birmingham. Eric currently is Company Secretary and one of the Directors of the EFNCP and also works as an environmental consultant specialising in agriculture and wildlife management (being a recognised European expert on the ecology and requirements of the chough). For the last 15 years, Eric and his wife Sue have run an extensively-managed sheep and cattle farm on the island of Islay in the Scottish Hebrides and are committed to farming it taking the existing high nature conservation interest into account. Eric has been involved with the EFNCP since its inception in 1988 and has not only helped conduct research projects but also edits the newsletter La Cañada.
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Benjamin Hill
Benjamin Hill works as an ecological consultant in Germany, specialising in conservation biology and landscape planning. He holds a degree in biology (nature conservation, animal ecology) and in his spare time he is currently finalising his PhD on the effects of extensive pig-grazing on ground beetle communities. Since Ben is living in one of the finance-capitals of Europe (Frankfurt, Germany) with his wife and two sons he only discovered how special low-intensity farmland is while at University. There he helped researching the importance of free-ranging livestock as a dispersal vector for immobile animals (e.g. snails, grasshoppers). Bens Masters study explored the links between dragonflies and mixed grazing on floodplain-pastures in Croatia. This work lead to a large research project on the use of pigs in conservation grazing.
Ben joined EFNCP in 2002 and has since then given input into conferences, workshops and projects. Currently he oversees the re-design of the Forums homepage. He has conducted consultancy work for the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), German Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food Affairs (BLE) as well as many regional and local conservation authorities.
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Gwyn Jones
Director
Gwyn Jones is based on the Isle of Skye in NW Scotland. Now a self-employed consultant, he was a farm advisor for 13 years, giving a range of farm business, agri-environment and CAP paperwork advice. His main interest is the interaction of policy measures with socio-economic realities in marginal areas. Gwyn has been a member of the EFNCP Executive Committee since 1997 and has since then been active in organising and fund-raising for many workshops, seminars and conferences. He has also been involved in a number of research projects and represents the Forum on the DG Agriculture Advisory Group on Agriculture and Environment. At present he takes primary responsibility for the Forum finances and fund-raising.
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Rainer Luick
Director
Dr Rainer Luick is Professor at the University of Rottenburg in the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg/Germany. He was scientifically trained as a Biologist at the University of Freiburg and also holds a Master Degree in Ecology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, USA). He received a PhD from the agricultural faculty of the Universiy of Hohenheim. His research acitivities are very much related with focal topics of the EFNCP (low intensity farming strategies, rural development and economics, rural- and conservation-policy evaluation, renewable energies).
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Davy McCracken
Director, Honorary Secretary
Dr Davy McCracken’s interests revolve around obtaining a greater understanding of the complex ecological relationships of high nature value European farming systems. Davy has been involved with the EFNCP since its first meeting in 1988 and has acted in a personal capacity as a Director and honorary secretary since 1995. After completing his PhD in 1990, on research into the diet of the chough, he first worked at the University of Newcastle and then moved to the Joint Nature Conservation Committee where he helped highlight the nature conservation importance of less-intensive farming systems throughout Europe. Since joining the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) in 1995 he has managed a number of projects assessing the biodiversity value of farmland (e.g. the EU-funded Concerted Action PASTORAL)
Davy's interest in the farming and wildlife in hill and mountain areas was stimulated by being born and bred on a hill-sheep farm in southern Scotland. He lives in Ayrshire with his partner Karen and his son Ciaran.
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Xavier Poux
Xavier Poux works at AScA, a consultancy company based in Paris involved in environmental policy analysis and strategy. He is an agro-economist by education and holds a PhD in rural economy. Since 1990, his main field of interest is to analyse how the development of farming systems is linked with the conservation of biodiversity and landscapes and how to better integrate biodiversity in policy making processes at different scales. To this purpose, he has been developing multidisciplinary studies and researches combining farming and agrarian system analysis, socio-economic and policy dimensions. In his activities he brings together public authorities and administration, environmental NGOs, farmer organisations and researchers.
Though he contributed for the French case study of the “Nature of Farming” in 1994, he has joined the Forum as an Exco member more recently, in 2005.
