Richard was born in 1947 in Folkestone, Kent. He worked extensively in agriculture in Canada and New Zealand before returning to the UK as a dairy farmer. For thirty years he ran and developed his own farming business before founding United Milk Plc. - a milk processing firm. During this time he was Chairman of the corporate arm of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) in the UK. Richard was first elected to the European Parliament in 2004. His primary focus since then has been working on the Agriculture and Budgets Committees. A particular interest of Richard’s is education and he was Chairman of Plumpton College in East Sussex for 15 years as well as serving on several public bodies in the education sector.