NFU Cymru members attending a recent county conference heard from ITV Wales senior correspondent Hannah Thomas about her passion for rugby and rural affairs.
“I was an avid viewer of ITV Wales’ Grassroots on a Sunday afternoon and of BBC Wales’ Homeland, which was on a Sunday lunch time. It was in my teens I knew this was what I really wanted to do, and I dedicated the next few years making it happen. As well as having a passion for rural affairs, I also love rugby. My Welsh coursework was all about rugby, and my poor mother would take me around to interview players, such as Dwayne Peel and Stephen Jones. I also did a project on Shane Williams that focused on my interviewing skills. Then, when I was doing my A-Levels my school projects focused on interviewing farmers about the impact of foot and mouth.
“As much as I loved rugby, I knew it was rural affairs I wanted to focus on when it came to TV. I was well aware that most TV journalists at the time had degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and I was a straight A student, so I had the grades, but I failed the interview process. This turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me. I went to Swansea to study English and History and spent any spare time I had doing work experience at BBC Wales and ITV Wales. I then went on to do a broadcast journalism course at Cardiff School of Journalism and from there I applied for an ITV Wales scholarship.
“I spent my time training in Cardiff and worked on rural crime stories as well as other rural issues, and my biggest feature was with NFU Cymru member, Rhys Lougher when they first opened the dairy. It didn’t go anywhere as it was for my degree, but I got really good grades for it.
“Once I graduated, I got a job with ITV Wales and have worked my way up. I co-presented the Ferret for three years and then in 2013 I went to work on Coast and Country and I’m one of a few people who have been involved with that since it started.”
Hannah told members that for her, her personal achievement is changing the psyche around farming at ITV. She said: “I am now senior correspondent with a brief of rural affairs. I am out on farms and in the rural communities every week. And this is thanks to farmers, all of you attending this meeting. You have trusted me to tell your stories about agriculture. When farming is getting a bad press and morale is tough, it can be hard to have faith in the media, but you’ve trusted in me to accurately represent rural communities.”
NFU Cymru Deputy President Aled Jones thanked Hannah for her continued support and for covering the stories that matter the most to farmers. Mr Jones also provided NFU Cymru members with an update on a number of areas of the union’s work, including its work with supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic, lobbying on the UK/EU trade deal, and net zero.
NFU Cymru Brecon & Radnor County Chairman Geraint Watkins said: “I’d like to thank Hannah for joining our county conference and providing members with an insight into her love for rural affairs. It is fantastic to see such strong farming coverage on ITV Wales news and we appreciate the work Hannah puts in to getting our stories out to the Welsh public.”
NFU Cymru would like to thank HSBC UK for sponsoring all 11 of this year’s virtual county conferences.