A former weekly editor has been recognised for raising the public profile of Welsh farming.

Peter Roberts, who edited the Cambrian News for seven years in the 1990s, has received the Farmers’ Union Of Wales’s Bob Davies Memorial Award.

Peter, who held the role of public relations director at the FUW until his retirement at the beginning of the year, had a career in the regional press which spanned four decades before making the move.

He joined the Carmarthen Journal as a trainee reporter straight from school and just over two years later was appointed the South Wales Evening Post’s Carmarthen district junior reporter.

FUW president Glyn Roberts (left) presents the Bob Davies memorial award to Peter Roberts

In September 1970 he became the Western Mail’s senior district reporter for Ceredigion, Montgomeryshire, Meirionnydd and Dwyfor and 14 years later the Cambrian News’ deputy editor.

Peter was appointed Cambrian News editor in July 1991 and after seven years in that post left to set up his own editorial consultancy pr.news which he ran until April 2002 when he became the FUW’s press officer.

Peter, 66, said: “Bearing in mind the calibre of those fellow media personalities that have already received this award, I am proud to follow in their footsteps.

“But I also feel like a gamekeeper turned poacher as, since the award’s inception, I used to be part of the FUW group that decided who should receive it every year.

“So I felt it was a bit nepotistic for me to be nominated this time but then I realised that I had covered the highs and lows of the farming industry for nearly 40 years before joining the FUW.

“And now it thrills me to recall that when I was 15 I used to deliver the South Wales Evening Post around my home village of Ferryside and over half a century later I still edit the FUW’s monthly newspaper Y Tir/Welsh Farmer, which is printed and produced by the Post’s current publishers.”