Rhian spent 10 years working at Farmers Weekly – seven of them as Livestock Editor.

Prior to this she graduated from the country’s top journalism course at Cardiff University where she was awarded a postgraduate diploma (National Council for the Training of Journalists-accredited) in Newspaper Journalism.

She grew up on a beef and sheep farm in South Wales. Rhian’s mother, Marion, ran the family’s cattle breeding company, World Wide Sires (formerly Semen World), for many years, and Rhian spent her youth helping at agricultural shows, where she developed a wide range of contacts.

She is a partner in her family’s farming business based in South Wales.

She has travelled extensively covering farming stories abroad and completed ‘Advanced Dairy Management’ training in Washington State. She has also completed various courses in farm bookkeeping, accredited by the Institute of the Agricultural Secretaries and Administrators, to better understand farm accounts and record-keeping requirements.

Rhian has won various awards for her writing and currently sits on the council for the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists (BGAJ).

Highlights during her tenure at Farmers Weekly include:

• Launching and managing a special which navigated readers through the issue of succession planning, while still a junior reporter
• Spearheading a campaign to reduce antibiotics use within the livestock sector
• Creating and overseeing Rethinking Cattle Performance – a combination of farmer workshops and print/online content to improve youngstock performance
• Travelling to New Zealand in 2015 to investigate how the UK could farm without subsidies
• Launching a report into the job recruitment and retention crisis currently facing the vet industry (2021) and hosting a roundtable of experts to look at how the industry can respond.