Even in these fast-changing times most people expect to be enjoying a well-earned retirement by the age of 65.

But blacksmith Michael Ward is still grafting in his foundry at the age of 75. And Mr Ward is so concerned for the future of fellow rural workers that he made time to mount a street protest in north Norfolk this week.

Mr Ward, from Edingthorpe, near North Walsham, fears the coalition government's planned abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board threatens the hard-won rights of thousands of men and women in Norfolk.

He and his son-in-law Nigel Ward set up a wheelbarrow and placard reading 'Scrapping the Agricultural Wages Board – a barrel load of misery for rural workers' in North Walsham Market Place, just yards from the site where the Eastern Counties Labourers and Small Holders Union was formed in 1906, a forerunner of the later National Union of Agricultural Workers.

They collected more than 200 signatures on a petition calling on the government to keep the Board which has controlled the industry's pay and conditions since 1948, the year Mr Ward started work on a farm, aged 13.

The independent Board had helped ensure a decent standard of living for thousands of vulnerable people in the county, many of whom worked in small numbers for an employer and were not in a strong position to negotiate individually with them, he said.

A measure of its success was that there had been no industrial disputes since its formation, but there had been a number beforehand.

It not only regulated workers' pay, but also important rights including sick pay, overtime rates and holiday entitlement. The Board's annual code also set a benchmark for related rural trades, such as gamekeeping.

'This is going to mean wages in rural areas could go down, which could affect the whole rural economy – shops, pubs and clubs,' said Mr Ward, a trade unionist since the age of 15 and secretary of the Trunch branch of the agricultural section of the union Unite.

He said that regular farm workers earned about �7 per hour, which was above the minimum wage, but still below the average national wage. The scale ranged from those doing unskilled fruit and vegetable picking, to managers and those who worked long hours and operated machinery worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Among those who had signed the petition was a farmer who said the Board had made his life easier and he did not want to have to negotiate with individual workers, according to Mr Ward.

The petition would form part of Unite's national protest which would include a lobby of Westminster, he added.

Environment secretary Caroline Spelman announced in July that the Board would be abolished as part of the so-called 'bonfire of the quangos' which will see nearly 200 public bodies axed as part cost-cutting measures and because the government believes the move will improve accountability.