Rowland Richard Robbins (1872–1960) was an English farmer, known for market gardening on a large scale, and also for involvement in farming affairs at a national level.
[1][2] His father, of "humble parentage", left his birthplace for London, first to work as confidential clerk to the banker Sir John Lubbock, but finding this insufficiently well-paid became a "fashionable greengrocer" based at Knightsbridge and Kensington,[3] and with his wife Caroline (née Ebbs) had nine children.
[2] "The youngest son of a lower-middle-class family of seven", and thus lacking prospects in his father's business because of his elder brothers, Robbins went into farming at Sipson west of London, with Thomas Wild (1848–1932), who was ailing, as senior partner.
[12][13] The wartime Corn Production Act 1917 which had fixed grain prices was replaced, and Robbins was involved in the negotiation under which the government compensated for lost subsidies on wheat and oats by research spending.
[16] Robbins objected to the establishment of the Milk Marketing Board, as proposed at an Annual General Meeting of the NFU Council by Sidney Wear after the Grigg Commission had reported, and resigned from it, with Ryland.