Paul Adams

Paul has over 40 years’ experience in agriculture. He trained at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester and joined the family business, farming 150 ha in Hampshire, UK, with a commercial grain storage and haulage operation. Following a move, he went on to manage 1000 ha of crops across seven farms run as a co-operative across Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire. During this time, Paul was also a director of a 50,000-ton co-operative grain store in Berkshire.

Taking a change of direction in the late 1990s, Paul became a self-employed agronomist providing advice to a number of smaller farms in Somerset. At the same time, he qualified as an auditor working for CMi (now NSF) at the launch of the Assured Combinable Crops Scheme (now Red Tractor) in 1998.

Initially specializing in the cereals farm standard, Paul soon broadened his scope to cover fresh produce, LEAF, Tesco, and Beef & Lamb. In 2006, Paul joined NSF as Scheme Manager for the combinable crops scheme and then became Head of Arable, managing all crop-based schemes carried out by NSF with a team of about 100 auditors. He was instrumental in working with GAFTA to develop, promote and roll out a suite of standards covering post farm gate activities such as grain haulage, storage, merchanting, analysis, fumigation, and cargo superintendents.

In 2013, Paul joined PepsiCo as part of the Europe Supplier Quality Assurance team with responsibility for 2,500 farm suppliers across 17 countries. Since 2015, he has been part of the Global SQA team and now heads a small team of three with responsibility for a long-term plan to approve the global supply of raw agricultural materials. This covers approximately 40,000 farms, ensuring they are following Good Agricultural Practices such as GLOBALG.A.P. to demonstrate control of pesticides, contaminants, and food safety protocols.