Farmers’ Champion Networker: a profile of Christopher R Jones


Christopher Jones exploded into existence during the second World War. After securing a first at Oxford in Agriculture and a wonderfully supportive wife, Ita, they served with CMS as missionaries in southern Nigeria.


Returning to the family farm in Northamptonshire was not easy, and there they learned the rigours of rescuing a business needing considerable revival and restructuring. What unsuspected preparation this was for real empathy with other farming families facing difficulties! He and Ita have since then managed their own farm by developing and letting the farm buildings to various rural businesses, selling off the house and adapting a barn as their own home, share- farming the arable acres and selling their beef and sheepmeat directly to consumers in imaginative marketing. They manage it in order to free up time to help others, including their own daughters and grandchildren.


Christopher’s tall, articulated and jovial corduroy-clad form first loomed into my view at an Agricultural Christian Fellowship (ACF) Annual Conference in the early 1970s, when we were pleased to recruit him to the committee. His desire to relate his faith to farming led to his founding of the ongoing Agriculture & Theology Project (ATP), including an International Agri-theology gathering in Germany in 1998 and a workshop on The WTO & Farmers in Geneva in 2001. He wrote Biblical Signposts for Agricultural Policy (ACF, 69 pp.) in 1991. Christopher has also served for many years on the Editorial Panel of this magazine and has widely encouraged the work of the Arthur Rank Centre (ARC). He also ably chaired the UK Food Group.


The seventh in a series of articles focussing on the special ministry of rural people


the USA and wrote Winner Takes All and Families Lose All (ACF, 48 pp.). It described the appalling plight of many farming families in the USA and alerted many to future problems elsewhere.


However, he is especially to be recognised for his diligence in setting up FCN (Farm Crisis Network), initially as a


partnership between ACF & ARC but now a fully registered charity and limited company in its own right. Typically, Christopher researched work to help farmers elsewhere, and was especially inspired by efforts of the Christian Farmers’ Association of Württemberg, Germany (notably by Dr Rudi Buntzel and Angelika Sigel). In 1993, the FCN steering group was formed and FCN was launched in 1995. In that same year, Christopher and Ita visited


Without Christopher’s vision, it is doubtful whether FCN would exist. Without his persistent diligence in securing EU co- funding and other funds, FCN operations could not have developed as they have. The participatory nature of FCN teamwork owes much to the culture of collaboration, brainstorming and consensus- seeking which characterises Christopher’s good-humoured but determined way of seeking constructive solutions. He has not only worked tirelessly to build FCN as an organisation but has also given much time to personal involvement with individuals and families in crisis. His visible work is the tip of the iceberg. His openness to ideas and undimmed desire to understand mark him out as a great reflective practitioner. Thought leads to word leads to deed in Christopher’s approach; none is sufficient without the other two. Thus, the FCN team is challenged to think, then to have the best communication it can arrange and then to act with pastoral sensitivity, technical competence and practical relevance for the benefit of farming families. Christopher Jones truly champions farmers!


John Wibberley


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