David Fursdon

David was educated at St John’s College, Oxford and at the RAU Cirencester, where he is now an honorary Fellow. Previously he worked in the MOD after serving with the Gurkha Rifles. He subsequently qualified as a rural Chartered Surveyor. He was President of the CLA between (2005-2007), a Commissioner of the Crown Estate (2008-2017) and of English Heritage (2009-2013). He was on the Affordable Rural Housing Commission (2005/6) and then chaired the South-West Board for the London 2012 Olympics; the Government’s ‘Future of Farming’ review (2013) and the SW Rural Productivity Commission (2017). David became Chairman of Dyson Farming in 2014.

In 2017 he became a Food, Farming and Countryside Commissioner and in 2021 became Chairman of the Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture (TIAH). He has run his own small Estate in Devon since 1979 (farming it for much of that time) and a consultancy business. He became Lord-Lieutenant of Devon in 2015. He has been chairman of Cadbury parish since 1982 and his interests include sport, having played first class cricket and club rugby.