A former broadcaster and writer, who was chairman of Oxford-based charity Oxfam, has died aged 88.

Mary Cherry, who lived in the city, was an agriculture journalist for the BBC World Service and chairman of Oxfam from 1989 to 1995.

She took the reins at Oxfam at a time when it had established itself as a global organisation with an annual income of £66.7m.

She also stewarded the charity through an investigation brought by the Charity Commission in April 1990 that would last 13 months.

It ultimately found Oxfam had exceeded the limitations placed upon it by charity law, but decided not to take any action.

Following the inquiry, Ms Cherry worked with the commission to re-define the rules on advocacy and campaigning.

She was born in Barford St Michael, Oxfordshire, in July 1926, to a family with a 600-year-old history in farming, and was a pupil at St Cecilia’s Primary School in Chipping Norton.

At Leamington High School, to which she won a bursary, she was so ready with her opinions on the plight of the poor British farmer she became known as the “Minister for Agriculture.”

In 1944, she went to Reading University and read agriculture, going afterwards to work for the Grassland Research Council.

In 1951, she won a scholarship of £300 from the Guild of Agricultural Journalists and was a feature writer on the Farmer and Stockbreeder, a position that would last 18 years.

She was even to appear on BBC radio drama the Archers in 1958.

Old Walter Gabriel introduced her by calling out, “that there wench be cum”, a greeting that followed her for years.

In 1966, Ms Cherry was made chairman of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists and in 1970, she left the Farmer and Stockbreeder for a world tour as a freelance journalist.

It was the start of her career with BBC Radio, for which she contributed work for World Service programme Farming World and Farming Today on Radio 4.

She also travelled the UK and between reporting jobs settled in Hook Norton, in North Oxfordshire.

In 1973, she took on her first assignments for the United Nations’ World Food Programme, writing a report on the food emergency in Cyprus and in 1975 she first visited Africa, where she said her “eyes were opened to the inhumanity and indignity of apartheid”.

In 1977, she was invited by Oxfam to serve on one of its Asian committees, and became a trustee.

She wrote about Oxfam projects around the world and in 1986 was made fellow of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists, and of the Royal Agricultural Societies.

By the late 1980s, she stepped away from journalism to give more time to Oxfam, becoming chairman in 1989 until 1995.

In the last years of her life, she remained in Oxfordshire.

Mary Cherry died on May 14.

Her funeral took place on Friday, May 29.