John Richards Orpen

Father and son ER and John Richards-Orpen were both presidents of the Irish Grassland Association. Both father and son served as governors of the Economic Research Institute (now ESRI) at the same time in 1961/62.

John Richards Orpen was a council member of the National Farmers’ Association from 1955 through the 1960s, initially as Co Wexford delegate, then as Chairman of the NFA Grain Committee and later as NFA Vice President for Leinster.

From 1958, he was Chairman of An Bórd Gráin, a statutory body established to purchase any Irish wheat output surplus to flour milling requirements and redirect it into the animal feedstuffs sector.
(National market management systems ended on Ireland’s accession to the EEC in 1972 and milling wheat-growing declined as a tillage crop in the 1980s).

It is indicative of John Orpen’s objective approach to every task in hand – and his ability to handle potentially conflicting farm sectoral or producer/consumer viewpoints – that he went on to serve as Chairman of the NFA Pigs and Bacon Committee in the early 1970s.

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