A bean crop planted as a memorial to an Oxfordshire farmer who died earlier this year of pleural cancer will be fully farm assured, following inspection by EFSIS-FABBL under the Assured Combinable Crops Scheme.

The Roger Nobbs Memorial Crop has been grown to raise money for Oxford’s Churchill Hospital, where Roger Nobbs was treated for the asbestos related disease. The proceeds of the crop will go to the Ken Lovell Fund, a charitable trust linked to the Oxford Pleural Disease Clinic.

Roger Nobbs, who ran Castle Farm in Deddington, was a past chairman and committee member of Barton Farming Club and his wife, Anne, is secretary.

Members of the club have given their time to produce the crop, while inputs, including the cost of the EFSIS-FABBL inspection, have been donated by companies throughout the industry.

“We’ve had wonderful support for it,” said Richard Betteridge, who donated the 46 acres of land on which the crop of winter beans is being grown. “We’ve had a lot of donations from people who think it is a good cause.”

Richard Betteridge is in no doubt that Roger Nobbs’s illness resulted from his farming work, although the direct source of the asbestos which caused it cannot be pinpointed. “It was an industrial death caused by asbestos,” he said.

“We’re very pleased to support this effort, which is a tremendous example of the farming industry coming together to do something really worthwhile,” said Chris Reading, EFSIS-FABBL General Manager of Agriculture UK.

“Over 95 percent of EFSIS-FABBL inspectors come from farming families and all have practical farming experience, so we’re well aware of the health & safety issues that exist in agriculture and the damage that can be done to people’s lives by work related illnesses.”

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