James Witty – World Conventional Ploughing Champion 2025

Yorkshire farmer James Witty, the newly crowned World Conventional Ploughing Champion, will return to defend his British National title at Allesley near Coventry on October 11^th and 12^th and will be joined by more than 220 other ploughmen and women. This year’s 74^th British National Ploughing Championships and Country Festival is kindly being hosted by the Brandreth family and the Thomas White Trust.

Using a Ford 4110 and Kverneland two furrow match plough, James overcame a breakdown and a 7.5 point deficit to Austria’s Stefan Steiner on day one to triumph in the conventional class by 11.5 points overall at the 70^th World Ploughing Contest, held in The Czech Republic on September 5^th and 6^th and lift the coveted Golden Plough Trophy for the first time.

In doing so, he joined an exclusive club of just four ploughmen to have claimed world titles in both the conventional and reversible classes. The first ploughman to achieve this feat was James’s late and much missed father, Graeme, who won three world conventional titles in 1988, 1990 and 1992 before scooping the reversible title in 1998. James won his reversible title in Canada in 2003. The only other ploughmen to accomplish this achievement are Northern Ireland’s Thomas Cochrane and Scotsman Andrew Mitchell Snr.

The last time a representative from England won the conventional world title was James’s father Graeme at Albacete in Spain in 1992. His win this year netted a tenth title at world level for the Witty family. James’s brother Simon won four consecutive World Reversible Championships between 2004 and 2007 and will be seeking another British title at Allesley this year when he goes head-to-head with his brother in the conventional class.