Haskins's love of the good life

摘要

For a man who was once after the job I do now, Chris Haskins is remarkably unassuming. The chairman of Northern Foods, who grew up on his father's farm in Wicklow, Ireland, would have liked most of all to be a journalist - preferably the farming writer for the FT - or, failing that, a farmer himself. 'Northern Foods is more of a hobby for me,' he jokes, as we stand in his farmyard in Yorkshire on a bitterly cold winter's day. The farm, about 20 minutes' drive from Northern Foods' headquarters in Hull, is a serious business for him. But that does not mean he can impose his views on his wife Gilda and oldest son Paul, who are the full-time farmers in the family. 'I have to be as tactful here as I do at Northern Foods, otherwise there are stony looks,' he says. In any case, 'they say it would go bust if left to me'.