This is taken from The Times, November 16, 2007:

Anthony Parkin
Broadcaster and farmer who interpreted agriculture for urbanites, especially through his contribution to The Archers

Anthony Parkin was a distinguished authority on farming, as a magazine journalist, radio producer and presenter and for 25 years as agricultural story editor of The Archers.

This last role, from which he eventually resigned because of what he saw as growing political correctness, was much discussed after he published Humbridge: An Everyday Story of Scriptwriting Folk (2002), a comic novel about a scriptwriter working on a radio soap opera who clashes with its politically correct editor.

Anthony John Parkin was born in Bristol in 1926. His father was secretary to the Port of Bristol Employers. When he was small his family moved to nearby Westbury-on-Trym, where they lived next to farmland, and as a schoolboy he spent his free time working on the farm, ploughing with horses and growing and selling produce. During the war his father ran the National Dock Labour Board, which meant a move to Knockholt, Kent, where they lived on the Chevening estate of Lord Stanhope.

From 1945 to 1947 he served with the RAF in India. Then, in 1949 - the year he married Pamela Dixon - he wrote to the editor of Farmers Weekly and was offered a job as a junior sub-editor, working in the offices in Shoe Lane, just off Fleet Street. He left to go to the University of Reading, where he read agriculture (and was elected chairman of the Socialist Club); but he returned after graduating in 1953.

In 1956 he began to work for the BBC, contributing pieces for its overseas programmes. He soon graduated to the Home Service; every Wednesday lunchtime he took part in Farm Fare, a live programme in which he did a weekly review of farming news.

In 1963 his wife died of a brain haemorrhage, and for some years he raised his three young children on his own, helped by his housekeeper. When he married Wendy Babbington in 1968 the family moved to Manor Farm at Oldwood Common, Worcestershire, where, on 62 acres, he kept cattle, sheep, pigs, hens and horses.

From 1964 to 1984 he was the producer of On Your Farm. Thanks partly to Britain's involvement with the EU and partly to the growth of pressure groups, farming was becoming a hot topic, and the programme developed into a model of intelligent discussion of farming from all points of view, enlightening to the non-farming audience and of real value to those involved in it.

Parkin also developed a breakfast programme - a genuine breakfast over which he and his reporters, among them Philip Wrixon, John Cherrington and David Richardson, would visit and talk with a farmer and his family; It gave the public a great insight into the daily realities of farming life.

It was in 1972 that Parkin became agricultural story editor of The Archers. He took his role very seriously, seeing the soap as a way of communicating the reality of farming to a wider public.

After the appointment of a new editor in 1991, however, he found himself increasingly at odds with the line the programme seemed to be taking. He was against, for example, the introduction of Usha Gupta, an Asian lawyer, to the soap, thinking it unrealistic that she would want to move there as the only Asian person or that she would be fully integrated so quickly. He criticised the enthusiasm of Archers characters for organic farming: “One acre in 1,000 in Britain is organic but in Ambridge it is 25 per cent", he said. He also talked about a change in the depiction of the sexes: “All the women are very strong and all the men are wimps or cads.”

Parkin's unhappiness at such developments found expression in his novel, Humbridge. On its publication, he said (“with a barely suppressed grin”, one journalist observed) that all the book's characters were wholly imaginary, but he nevertheless called the process of writing it “cathartic”.

Among his many awards, Parkin won the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors' award for the best article/programme about farming partnerships; a Fison Award and the Netherthorpe Award for “outstanding contribution to agricultural communication”.

In 1991 the Royal Agricultural Society of England struck a medal for him, and in 1997 he was awarded the Farmers' Club cup for interpreting agriculture to the layman.

A campaigner all his life, he defended hunting, fought for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and against apartheid, challenged the expanding influence of the Common Market and helped to found the Campaign for Real Ale. In 1997 he stood for Parliament in the general election as a Referendum Party candidate.

Parkin and Wendy separated in 1984 and he married Roberta Mitchell in 1989. They moved to a house just outside Tenbury Wells. In his later years Parkin relished the arts and travel and was a passionate supporter of beagling. He was a great host and raconteur and an astute observer of the political scene.

His wife survives him, as do the son and two daughters of his first marriage and the daughter of his second.

Anthony Parkin, broadcaster and farmer, was born on July 12, 1926. He died on October 19, 2007, aged 81